AAMIR's MIDAS TOUCH: SAVVY OR CLOUT?

A lot has been written about how Aamir Khan's marketing savvy has turned a low budget art house mockumentary into a commercial hit. "Peepli Live" got an opening like no other film of that kind of budget, genre and cast ever got, and the numbers offered for music right, satellite right and other ancillary rights have already made this a profitable venture many times over. This is irrespective of the merit of the film which already had a seal of quality in the minds of art house audience by virtue of its selection at the Sundance film festival. That notwithstanding, the final product was artistically a bit disappointing even for those who like this kind of cinema, myself included. The first half of the film was exciting, innovative and well paced and the interval point when frame freezes on the wacky Natha family with two goats in their arms, all of us who had gone to see the film looked at each other and gave it a thumbs up. Even though the media brouhaha for the sake of TRPs has been a subject of many films in the past, including highly under-rated, Aziz Mirza's "Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani"; the rural setting and believable performances by the actors made "Peepli Live" feel fresh as a political satire. However, second half of the film dragged on without any new insights and the wrap up of the film was quite clumsy.
Prior to the release of the film, we saw Aamir on every TV channel doing talk shows, reality shows, playing drums with Indian Ocean, playing dholak with Raghuveer singing 'Mahengayee Dayan' with a folk troupe etc., hyping the movie to an extent that for the weekend of Friday August 13,2010; it became the film to watch and most other commercial films stayed away from that release date. Aamir had the marketing savvy but more important he had the clout as a brand to be able to carry out his marketing plan in all these various media. If anybody else had produced this film, it would have been nearly impossible to get this kind of visibility even though they may have the savvy to plan a campaign like this. Implementing this ambitious media hype needed the clout which few people have in this industry. Aamir has, over time, built a brand brick by brick, and his association with a project already gives it a quality seal of approval. His "Taare Zamin Pe" followed by "Three Idiots" consolidated that association of quality even though he was only an actor in the second one. Now that "Dhobi Ghat" has been selected for showcasing at the Toronto Film Festival, this image of Aamir 's name associated with quality cinema ( Niche or Mass) is likely to continue.
Great marketing ideas will only remain ideas on paper, if one doesn't have the clout to get them implemented. On the other hand clout alone doesn't guarantee marketing savvy. You need both to be able to qualify as the man with the midas touch, as Aamir is now called.

Evaluation of a Film's Quality

Two films of mine are opening in theatres in India within this week. One called APARTMENT, already opened yesterday with very little advertising, and one called CHASE, is opening on 29th with a robust marketing campaign. The one with little marketing is a psycho-thriller made at a modest budget with financial constraints but no creative interference from the producer and one with robust marketing is an action thriller made with generous budget but total creative interference by producer in the post production stage.
The film critics have not been very kind to the psycho-thriller and without the advertising support it needed to get the people to go to the theatres and judge for themselves, its box-office prospects appear rather bleak. I still stand by that film because creatively it represents my vision. Therefore, I am ready to accept the brick-bats with the bouquets.
The other one will open its cards next thursday so we don't know what the film critics will have to say until then, but because of the marketing effort, it atleast stands a chance to get better opening numbers in spite of the simultaneous release of a multi-star cast big budget, big banner film. I am not standing by that film because creatively, after the post-production tempering by the producer, it no longer represents my vision. It may get better reviews and better box-office but my conscience will not allow me to accept those bouquets and I will still stand by what my creative objections have been. In spite of them, I wish the film to do well.

I have ofcourse tried to get hold of all the reviews of APARTMENT and understand what the critics found lacking in the film. First accusation was that it is a rip off of Single White Female. Thematically both films deal with a psycho room mate. So does Pacific Heights (Psycho tenant), Crush (Psycho landlady) and I am sure research will unearth many such films in the psycho-thriller genre. Does that mean with out reference to others, in itself the story doesn't work? No critic analysed the script on its own merit and show what didn't work with in the framework of contemporary urban living in India. Critics use adjectives like run-of-the mill thriller. What does that exactly mean? Aren't all genre films run-of-the mill? Other criticism is it is linear and predictable. Since when linear story telling has become bad story telling. Aren't stories supposed to have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Since time immemorial stories have been narrated in this manner. Isn't that linear? Why has non-linearity for the sake of non-linearity become a virtue instead of a gimmic? Why does suspense have to be unpredictable? It is not a whodunit kind of mystery. Almost all stories in genres other than mystery are predictable. The fun is not in where are you going but how are you getting there. If that journey is engaging and suspenseful, that should be good enough.
One critic brought reference to the 1960 Billy Wilder film 'The Apartment' and said it is not even a distant relative. It is not even trying to be. Just because it has the same title 50 years apart in a different country and different language, the critic brings it up in a completely irrelevant context. Calling it a poor apology for soft core pornography is even more befuddling as there is no gratuitous nudity in this film and censors gave it an A certificate without any cut.
It is easy to call anything sappy, amateurish, bland and average without having to explain why. Rather than regurgitating the story, coming up with some fancy derogatory adjectives and no responsibilty to enlighten why specifically something doesn't work, the reviewers don't do anything else. If as a film maker, I wanted to learn something concrete from this feedback and improve my story telling skills for the future, I get no insights. All I have is one person's opinion which is unsubstantiated but important because of the platform on which it is expressed. This media platform has the power to give 'quality evaluation stars' for a film because of which it doesn't even get a fair chance to be judged by the target audience for whom it was made.