Subhash K Jha looks back at Nagesh Kukunoor’s quirky take on Bollywood, Bollywood Calling, which released in 2001.
After carving the cult comedy Hyderabad Blues about an NRI’s bride-hunting adventures in Hyderabad a lot of cynics decided on Nagesh Kukunoor’s behalf that he had finished telling all the stories that he had to tell. Kukunoor’s second feature film Rockford confirmed the doubters’ smug belief. A poorly scripted semi-autobiographical work, Rockford seemed like Enid Blyton’s boarding school novels with a dash of Dravidian drollery.
But Bollywood Calling mended all breaches. It’s one of the funniest satires on the whole ‘concept’ of Bollywood we’ve ever seen. Taking the infamous formula to the littoral of ludicrousness Kukunoor has woven a story of a young burnt-out dying American actor (Pat Cusack) who gets taken in by an unctuous South Indian producer (Om Puri) to do a Hindi film where he must share screenspace with an aging bewigged Indian superstar (Navin Nischol).
Of course, the outsider from America looking on with perplexed amusement at the Big Wide Bollywood Bazar is Kukunoor himself. Having failed to find a comfort level in mainstream cinema he stands on the edge of the mythic chaos in Mumbai’s show world, looking in with exasperated wonderment, just like the American B-grade star who has no script, no concept of the language in which he’s required to speak, no idea of what the Bollywood bazar sells to the public, until a rather fetchingly obnoxious starlet Kajal (Perizaad Zorabian) apprises the culturally superior American of what ‘ Bollywood’ signifies for the Indian public.
The dressing down and catharsis are extremely clever devices employed to assuage all doubts and misgivings among Indian audiences as to whether their tastes are being ridiculed by this cocky NRI filmmaker who thinks he can get away with deriding the whole culture of escapism that has prevailed in the country from time immemorial.
Om Puri who so brilliantly and effortlessly plays the bumbling producer turned director by default in Bollywood Calling tells me the ‘inhouse’ jokes about the slothfulness and extravagance on the sets of a typical Hindi potboiler had the British audiences in splits when the film was shown at the London Film Festival last year.
That may be good news for India’s foreign exchange. But it also defeats the purpose of making a film on ‘Bollywood’ that finally tells the audience , ‘Hey, look. We make stupid films. But we enjoy doing it. And who are you to tell us otherwise?’
If we look at the broad satire in the scenes depicting the asinine formulization of the average Hindi film in Bollywood Calling we can accuse the film of selling perverse exotica to the West.
Bollywood Calling is crammed with some of the most humorous satire we’ve seen in Indian films. More than the broad spoof on the dreaded ‘Formula’ it’s the behind-the-scenes hi-jinks that have us in splits. There’s a sequence where the sozzled Bollywood star offers to take his American colleague for a drive. “I drive much more safely when I’m drunk,” he assures his guest. In the next sequence we see the Bollyood Icon steering calmly for a few minutes after which the American drawls, “You have to first start the car to drive it.”
Unconsciously the above sequence projects a double-etched irony. While depicting the obvious inanity of the moment, it also takes a potshot at the suspension-of-disbelief theory that manoeuvres a majority of mainstream movie making in not just India, but every part of the world.
The burgeoning relationship between the American star and Bollywood icon (who believe it or not, play laugh…sorry, half-brothers) culminates in a confrontation scene where the all-gnawing Yank yanks off the pompous Bollywood star’s wig to make him helpless vulnerable and pathetic.
Such ‘turning points’ don’t necessarily make for High Art. In fact, while watching the film we often feel Kukunoor is subjecting himself to the rite of the trite that he otherwise elects to satirize in such bright stroke of humour and chuckles. The manipulative climax where the arrogant selfdestructive alcoholic Yankee star comes to his senses after a close brush with death is one of biggest cliches from mainstream cinema, yanked into a comforting context to round off the uproarious satire, like the Bollywood star Manu Kapoor’s wig being put back in place.
So whom is Kukunoor kidding? Well, most of the time he’s taking well-aimed potshots at both his own inability to fit into the masala mould of Mumbai and Mumbai’s dream churning factory’s failure to arrive at a refined state of selfexpession even after so many years in the business.
In walking the tightrope between social satire and social comment, Bollywood Calling never trips and falls, never goes overboard. Even the overstatement that Kukunoor indulges in so generously is finally emblematic of the excesses that emasculate escapist cinema. Tomorrow Kukunoor may himself make a film like his producer-protagonist Subramaniam’s film Maut.
But who cares! As long as the audience gets its money’ s worth.
