Make Money and Look Sanskari Doing It: The Rise of Worship Cinema in Bollywood.

There was probably not as much hype about the Ramayana in the 5th Century BCE as there is currently for Ranbir Kapoor’s iteration of Ram. Ever since the trailer dropped, the internet’s been ablaze with news, rumours and opinions about the movie. Some say Ranbir Kapoor was born to play the mythic hero, while others think he should stick to playing testosterone-addled, machine-gun-wielding hunks. Whether they criticise or praise the movie, everyone is waiting for its release and, subsequently, how much money it makes. The movie reportedly cost around 2000 crore rupees to make and is the most expensive Hindi movie ever produced. So, of course, the question arises whether it will be able to recoup its investment. Now, there’s no way to answer that question right now, but the general consensus is that projections for it are pretty optimistic. So, how can a 2000 crore rupee movie be so confident in making its massive budget back? Well, if the selling point of the movie depends not on its craftsmanship or its story, but rather on the worship of its primary audience, it’s an easy projection to make.

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This is, of course, not exclusive to the Ramayana movie; it is only able to set its goals so high due to the success of previous such films. In recent years, Bollywood has made more and more of these movies, where the focus is not on the story but your own personal connection with the character being portrayed on screen. This can be a biopic or a mythological story or even docu-fiction, but the end goal is the same: make money off of people wanting to see their idols on screen.

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Some other movies that have followed this pattern are Chhaava, Swatantra Veer Savarkar and Raja Shivaji, among many. A staple for these films is shoddy CGI and set design, and forgoing a proper story for aura moments and pulpy dialogue. This follows along the decades-old blueprint of the ‘masala’ movie, but is quite a twist on it. The masala movie does not pretend. It purports to give you a good time, not a good story. Putting this formula on a biopic, for instance, is unfaithful to the person they’re representing, whoever they may be. Yet, these movies never seem to fail at the box office.

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India has a very proud culture. Indians are celebrated nationwide for their achievements, and our idols are worshipped akin to Gods. So, it is obvious for business-minded producers to be taking advantage of it. Yet, it seems that now the focus is entirely on just the person being portrayed and not their story. Actors are shown working overtime to represent every characteristic of the person on screen, yet no such dedication is being given to the story, or just the general production for that matter. Everything from the PM Narendra Modi movie to Namit Malhotra’s Ramayana has been afflicted with the same ailment.

This, singlehandedly, is not the biggest problem plaguing Bollywood right now, but the decline of production quality in movies very much is. The tradition of intricate plots and set design is largely lost in modern Bollywood. Ramayana promised to deliver that, but seems to have largely failed. Other movies tend not to even try. It seems the goal has shifted from making movies that matter to movies that make money. Which leads to cheap sets, weak stories and ultimately unremarkable movies.  If at least the movies about our greatest figures shift their focus back towards the art of filmmaking, I think we’ll find that the box office collection won’t be that terrible.

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