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 I am not standing by that film because creatively, after the post-production tempering by the producer, it no longer represents my vision.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.

CROSS OVER CINEMA - What is it?

It has been a while since I sat down to write my thoughts. Various topics cross my mind. FICCI/Frames recently concluded its three day entertainment industry conference in Mumbai. There were big names on the panel (e.g. Karan Johar, Nandita Das, Javed Akhtar, Kamlesh Pande, Vidya Balan, Vijay Krishna Acharya, Siddtharth Roy Kapur, Vijay Singh to name a few) and lofty topics for discussion (e.g. Will Indian Film's Cross Over?, Relevance of Film Reviews to Box Office performance, Big Budget Flops - What ails the film industry, Future of entertainment in the next decade etcetra). Opening keynote address was by Shahrukh Khan, closing was by Ashok Amritraj. Political leaders like Ashok Chavan opened the conference and Ambika Soni closed it. Lots of eager delegates and wannabe film makers ran around from one venue to another getting an opportunity to meet and greet people like Yash Chopra and Ramesh Sippy. All very nice. But at the end of the day did I learn anything new?

I learnt that Shahrukh doesn't think there is any such thing as a cross-over film. There is comedy film, horror film, action film, romantic film but no such genre as cross-over film. Karan said flippantly once a film crosses it is over. In my opinion, cross-over is not a genre. If a film reaches an audience beyond its intended target audience as defined by the parameters of the film's setting, culture and language; it becomes a cross-over film. By that definition, Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali was a cross-over film in US, Raj Kapoor's Awara was a cross-over film in Russia, Rajnikant's Dancing Maharaja was a cross-over film in Japan, Mother India was a cross-over film in Peru. None of those film makers had designed their films to reach this unexpected audience. B.Subhash was himself surprised that Disco Dancer became a hit in Russia.

Most of the time when business seminars talk about cross-over cinema, they look at the possibility of increased market size by broadening the demographics. Degree of market penetration in non traditional market will determine added volume of business. Therefore, when a chinese film, Crouching Tiger does more than 100 million in US market or an italian film, Life is Beautiful wins an oscar and respectable US Box-office the trade calls them cross-over films. However, what is important to remember is that while making the film the film maker didn't try to make it audience friendly to an american audience by following norms of american cinema. As a matter of fact more deep rooted the film is to it's story's milieu and culture, more universal its appeal becomes. Iranian cinema, Spanish cinema, Brazilian cinema are examples of this. Their filmmakers tell their stories in their language and still find a niche audience outside of their traditional markets. My own experience of travelling to different film festivals with BAWANDAR which was mostly narrated in marwari language because of its story set in the backdrop of rural rajasthan is testimony to this. German women watching the film in Oslo were crying at the plight of a low caste women in Jhanjheu village. Many film producer's come to me to make a film set in India, in english language, so that it will have a cross-over appeal. As a matter of fact that will probably completely destroy its cross-over potential.

A Film Maker's Dilemma

The enjoyment of the experience of watching a movie has to do with the audiences suspension of disbelief of whatever is being presented on the screen and accepting the audiovisual imagery as real for the time they are engrossed in its content. Different people have different thresholds for this suspension. This threshold is determined by their demographics (age, gender, education, income, location, marital status, parenthood etc.) and their psycho graphics (religious beliefs, cultural upbringing, family values, life experiences, worldview etc.). Not all factors are weighted equal and since many of the factors as well as the weights assigned to them change with time for each individual member of the audience, it becomes a real challenge for a film maker to try to identify with some degree of accuracy the target audience for his or her film.

There is another factor which is unique to consumption of this form of entertainment by the audience. And that factor is called" Word Of Mouth". Since most people in the world are "Other-directed" instead of being "Inner-directed", they are not only afraid to express their individual opinion if it is contrary to the majority, but are also willing to change it to conform to the majority, resulting in a "Snowball Effect". Therefore, outspoken opinion leaders, (read film critics, mostly by virtue of the public platforms they control to disseminate their opinion), can make or break the opening of a film. In this day and age of saturation releases, the opening weekend collections account for almost 60-70% of the film's total revenue potential. Weekend grosses are reported by each and everyone in the print , broadcast and cyber media. They have somehow become barometers of Quality and the "snowball effect" their reporting creates mostly results in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So the film maker's dilemma is whether to make a film which audience wants ( trying to figure that out as explained earlier is almost as difficult as figuring out the existence of God), or make a film which appeals to him/her, and hope that there is a large enough audience in sync with him/her, for it to recoup its investment..