The fascination for cinema’s self-reflection | Hindi Movie News

The release of Aryan Khan’s debut vehicle The Ba***ds of Bollywood has brought the much needed excitement to the industry but also a debate. The show tells the story of an outsider trying to make it big in the Hindi film industry and how he deals with powerful people within and outside of the industry. The release has come on close heels to Seth Rogen’s Emmys sweep for his show The Studio- Hollywood’s satirical take on the mechanism of stardom, creative compromises and the chaos of running the studio. Cinema about cinema often runs the risk of turning inwards, indulging into self-seriousness that often alienates the very audience it is trying to entertain. In 2007 Farah Khan gave us Om Shanti Om with Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone and Arjun Rampal , her take on the movie business was rather frank, sprinkled with comedy and not abrasive and it made a lot of fun of the movers and shakers of the industry. OSO laugh with the industry while laughing at the industry. In sharp contrast to it came Zoya Akhtar’s sharply observed debut which portrayed the grinds of auditions , ego clashes and compromises. The film headlined by Farhan Akhtar and Konkana Sen Sharma was hailed as one of the most authentic films in the movie business but yet the film underperformed commercially. The film which exposed the struggle of finding work in Bollywood struggled to find an audience willing to pay for honesty. Post these two, Hindi cinema also got Madhur Bhandarkar’s Heroine. The film again spoke about the corrosive effects of fame in the world of cinema. Kareena Kapoor Khan delivered a power packed performance but the audience felt the film was too heavy and too eager to expose scandals with no fresh take on them. The darker a film gets the greater is the danger that the audience starts to feel bitter about it. But a satirical take on the industry has found enough takers. The latest example being Seth Rogen’s The Studio. With all this there was Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rahman’s Kaagaz Ke Phool, a haunting exploration of fame’s fickleness and loneliness that your creativity often brings with it. The film today is considered a classic but what the film portrayed on screen happened with Guru Dutt in reality.The irony of the subgenre is that it is often most loved by critics, insiders and cinephiles- the very people who are already immersed in the world it showcases. But the audience at large craves for escapism. When they go for movies they want to be transported to imagined worlds rather than being reminded of how the machinery behind their films work. This is the reason why films like Pushpa 2 or Pathaan work wonders at the box office. The jury is still out on Aryan Khan’s debut show as its writer- director and only time will tell how the show will be perceived by the audience. The question remains will Aryan’s debut navigate the delicate balance between fascination and self realisation or will it join the long list of films and shows that took themselves too seriously to find the audience they deserve.