Is Bollywood on the decline?

Aamir Khan Productions released an apology video on Twitter on Thursday. “We are humans and we make mistakes,” the video said, in the voice of Aamir. While it’s not clear why the video was posted, many speculated that the Hindi superstar was apologising for the dismal performance of his latest film ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’.

With the debacle of the ambitious ‘Forrest Gump’ adaptation, Bollywood’s hope of the ever-dependable Aamir reviving the industry’s dismal situation went up in smoke. The industry, with just three hits (‘Kashmir Files’, ‘Gangubhai Kathiawadi’ and ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2’), is facing its biggest reality check.

The expectations from an Aamir Khan film is massive but the film began in a shaky manner, once its trailer was out, cinephiles accused the film of trying to ruin a ‘classic’ like ‘Forrest Gump’. Then, the boycott brigade on social media was furious over Aamir for his alleged ‘anti-national’ comment in 2015.

This wasn’t the first case of people being divided over a film based on their political leaning.
“In the course of my career, I have never seen this kind of polarisation of political opinion in India as it is been today,” says senior film critic M K Raghavendra. “It (boycott movement) is a product of that and nothing to do with cinema,” he adds.

Raghavendra weighs in on the impact of the social media boycott campaigns. “I am fairly sure that more than the number of people curious about the controversy and going to watch the film, there are more people who follow the boycott calls and not watch it,” he opines.

Social media analysts say these campaigns are politically motivated. “Major trends or campaigns on social are no longer spontaneous. They are carefully orchestrated by political parties,” says an analyst.

That said, did Aamir go wrong in touching an evergreen film like ‘Forrest Gump’? “I don’t think so,” says Baradwaj Rangan, the National Award-winning film critic. “Considering the target audience, ‘Forrest Gump’ isn’t a popular movie in India,” he says.

Rangan’s analogy reveals a tactical blunder by Aamir. “‘Forrest Gump’ is a story of a man with a low IQ, who accidentally finds himself in the midst of various events in history, including the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal and other political events.

The problem in India is there are certain things in Indian politics that you can’t touch because we simply don’t have the freedom to talk about or show things like the US has. Somebody will object to that,” he argues.

He feels the film has less relevance for the current generation. “Most importantly, ‘Forrest Gump’ released at a time when people were still in touch with history. Today, when you ask the young generation about Operation Blue Star or the Anti-Sikh riots or even the 1983 World Cup, they don’t really have an idea. They know India won the World Cup but they don’t know the players of those times,” says Rangan.

It’s still early to draw a major conclusion but people are slowly losing faith on Bollywood. How else can you explain the failures of Akshay Kumar’s films (‘Bacchan Pandey’, ‘Samrat Prithviraj’ and ‘Raksha Bandhan’), who was, till this year, Bollywood’s safest bet even in its tough times? Film critic Rahul Desai feels the rising streaming platforms has worsened the situation for the Hindi film industry.

“The streaming platforms have better and more diverse content. The slow downfall of Bollywood can be traced back to 2015-16 when these OTT platforms really took off. The pandemic then made it worse and the whole negativity surrounding mainstream Hindi cinema has also had a slight impact,” he reasons.

But Hindi cinema, unlike the web series format, have had very little to offer on the online space as well.

“The problem with the streaming ecosystem is that they are also turning into a mini version of the theatrical system. They’ve acquired a lot of content that would’ve otherwise played in cinema. The kind of storytelling that OTT platforms had has been diluted to an extent. A lot of fresh talent doesn’t get acquired by streaming sites anymore compared to 6 or 7 years ago. Bollywood coming to these platforms was inevitable because wherever there is money, the mainstream cinema will go there,” notes Rahul.

The dominance of mainstream films from the south (‘RRR’, ‘KGF’ and ‘Pushpa’) is pushing Bollywood into a deeper crisis. It’s time Hindi cinema looks beyond the lazy template of sequels (‘Ek Villain Returns’), sports biopics (‘Shabaash Mithu’) and remakes (‘Cuttputli’). “Compared to the southern industries, there has been a dearth of imagination in Bollywood because the star system is still prevalent there,” sums up Rahul, about an industry that’s mired in problems with a bigger overhaul appearing inevitable.