In a recent interview Anurag Kashyap, who is riding on high on his recent success ’Maharaja’ told that Hindi film industry is suffering from “The Trial Room Effect”. According to him, in current scenario, Bollywood is mostly controlled by people who belong to second generation and have grown up in trial rooms. For them their references are based on cinema and not on real ideas.
He further states that for these people what is not on screen cannot be cinema and they do not make any original root idea into a film because in their head it can’t be cinema. He goes on to mention how Yash Raj Films is suffering from “The Trial Room Effect”. To support his viewpoint he quotes examples of films like Thugs of Hindustan and Shamshera that according to him were inspired by Pirates of Caribbean and Mad Max Fury.
Anurag Kashyap does make a good point here but is it the full truth? To some extent yes! The big production houses in the Hindi film industry come from a place of privilege, surrounded by cinema and stars, often detached from the real world. For them to relate with real stories on ground will probably be difficult and that’s why resorting to cinema for reference is natural and inevitable.
That’s the reason we see a lot of films on spies, cops, or some other patriotic action themed dramas these days and if nothing else there are remakes. It’s like an assembly line producing exact same models. This is killing creativity and any art without creativity, to be honest, is dead. Nobody is interested in the same old ideas wrapped in new shiny covers.
To negate the whole industry won’t be right though. Recent films like ‘Merry Christmas’, ‘Laapataa Ladies’, ‘Shaitaan’, ‘Madgaon Express’, ‘Crew’, ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’, ‘Munjya’, ‘Kill’ and more have gained attention and received good response from the public.
So yes there are attempts to try novel ideas but it cannot be denied that more efforts on this front from big production houses of the Hindi film industry will be a welcome move.