Whither Auteurs?

On the eve of the Oscars this Sunday, The New York Times has a thought provoking lead on the relevance of this whole annual rigmarole ( interestingly, it shares column space with another article singing paeans to Rahman's magic ). It makes the claim that Oscar's have become a side-event, an irrelevancy. Look at the factoid that leaving aside Slumdog and Benjamin Button, the next three biggest Oscar nominees have a combined gross less than that of Paul Blart : The Mall Cop. Why should the public opt for a movie so singularly devoid of any shred of artistic merit? Why should Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino garner more revenues than any of his noteworthy previous roles?

This disconnect between the expectations of the auteurs and the cinema audience has resonances for Indian cinema too. It acts as a raison-de-etre of sorts for the dumbed down mish-mash that Bollywood serves us. Give the public hounds baying for spam their due. And leave the finer points of cinematic appreciation to the denizens of the film festival circuit. As I hail from Pune, which is a culturally awakened town, I never had a shortage finding compatriots to accompany me to shows of the Citizen Kanes of cinema. But, it is easy to imagine the sufferings of a poor person who has to endure hours of watching the antics of Karan Johar, Ajay Devgan, the comic hero films and thier ilk for the sake of his peers.

But, I can see signs of a change coming along. In the United States, in Europe and even in Pune, there is a growing awakened class which actively seeks out the sort of cinema which doesn't demand that you remove your brain and keep it on the seat besides you. When I had gone to see Slumdog Millionaire in Minneapolis, it was being shown only in one distant small theater in an affluent suburb. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the audience for what was then a fringe movie almost fully consisted of Americans, with a sprinkling of Indians. And the crowd showed a frank appreciation of this exotic fare being dished up to them, even to the extent that hardly anyone stood up to leave at the end because they waited till the credits and the Bollywood dance number ended. The audience looked pleasantly baffled by the cinematic style and content, but they had an open-mind approach. It is this readiness to sample new things which led to Slumdog being given a nation wide release a few months later.

As long as there is this vibrant and growing core audience willing to support brave new cinema, I hope the Junos, Little Miss Sunshines, Sideways, No Countrys and the Slumdogs will keep coming.