Indian biography pdf download

THE BIOPIC IN INDIAN CINEMA Pavithra Sreekumar Bachelor of Creative arts, Film Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology October 23, 2018 The biographical picture or biopic for short is a genre of film that portrays the life or life events of an individual in a dramatic format. The biopic emerged as a notable form of filmmaking in the 1930s in America. The first biopic to be made is generally regarded as Disraeli by Alfred E. Green in 1929. Regarded as a historical film at the time, Disraeli was a story about the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and his conflicts with the Russian forces to acquire the Suez Canal. After Disraeli, Hollywood went on to create around 300 biographical films during 1927 to 1960, all of which were produced by major studios. The biopic format of the retelling of success stories of great men/women of the time provided as a celebration of the American history and therefore gave rise to its popularity. It portrayed people of certain professions like sportsmen, politicians and scientists, most of the time, and therefore ended up glorifying the same. As Belén Vidal states, “The genre ultimately reinforced the ideological and economic logic of the film industry, dovetailing myths and values that, embodied by their producers and stars, helped legitimize Hollywood as an institution.” 1 All these reasons paved way for their financial success as well and the genre ended up becoming the one that made the most revenue as compared to the others. The biographical picture was popularized in Indian cinema only in 1977 by the making of Chanakya and Chandragupta. Although the first Indian biopic ever made was Raja Harishchandra in 1913, it was considered more as a historical re-enactment. The biopic genre in Hindi cinema has seen a growing popularity in the past decade. This is due to a combination of factors starting from early Indian literature and folklore to the contemporary storytelling formats. By implementing the concepts of heroism and family from the literature and creating a hybrid storytelling format of documentary and fiction, the Indian biopic caters to audience sentiment and drives the agendas of the industry of filmmaking. The reasons for the success of Chanakya and Chandragupta (N.T. Rama Rao, 1977) can be attributed to its star cast, the two Telugu movie icons, Akineni Nageswara Rao and N.T. Rama Rao. Here the popularity of a film is associated with the popularity of the actors in it. This sort of association is very familiar to the Indian audience as Mahendra Ved points out, that “Indians have for long searched their 1 Tom Brown and Belén Vidal, The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014), 4-5. heroes in scriptures, epics, history, folklore and in literature.” 2 Therefore when a familiar storyline is presented to the Indian audience in a different medium, they connect with it immediately. Looking at the two greatest epics of Indian literature Mahabharata and Ramayana, we see recurring themes of heroism, good versus bad, conflict and family. Ramayana traces the journey of an avatar of the God Vishnu, named Ram, and his obligations to his family, wife and brother. Every step of the way his actions and deeds are pictured as virtuous; being divine enough to revere him and also human enough to understand him. Mahabharata follows the lives of five brothers and their quest to beat the evil forces in an epic battle. Here, the theme is larger and involves multiple people at the same time, and their collective goal of the conquering of good over evil. While the former provides the basis for the Indian biopic on individual life stories, the latter provides the basis for the biopic about historical events involving great people. Many forms of art and literature have been adapted to theatre first, and then to cinema. Through these transitions, Indian stories have retained the essence of family values and culture and have also adapted to the new and modern ways of storytelling through cinema. Some popular genres of Indian cinema are folk, drama, romance and most recently the biopic. By breaking down the format of a biopic, we may understand the reasons for its popularity in contemporary culture. The treatment of an Indian biopic is somewhat between a documentary and fiction film. For example, as stated by Pramod K. Nayar, “The incorporation of real life scenes and the biographical subject himself in the case of Sachin, for instance, lends an air of realism to the plot.” 3 The documentary format of filmmaking is about presenting the story as objectively as possible. It relies on real facts, figures and data to present a narrative to us that gives us the knowledge of the events, as well as the enquiry of the filmmaker that led to the knowledge. It is considered more or less as an accurate representation of historical figures and occurrences; and is used for contextual studies and records. One can say that it also a reportage style of filmmaking that aims mainly to inform and create awareness. In the fictional format of storytelling, the story is not a presentation of Mahendra Ved, “The Indian Cinema Is into ‘biopics’,” New Straits Times, January 14, 2017, https://www.nst.com.my/news/2017/01/204174/indian-cinema-biopics. 3 Pramod K. Nayar, "Biopics: The Year in India," Biography 40, no. 4 (2017): 609, doi:10.1353/bio.2017.0053. 2 events or people but a re-presentation of the same. The fictional story is subjective and brings much mediation between the filmmaker and the audience. It is a re-enactment of a story or events, played by characters and portrayed through situations that elicit the story best. The fictional story is always a personal interpretation and will therefore never be considered as a general known truth. The biopic today is a format that incorporates elements of both of documentary and fiction styles of filmmaking. It attempts to inform the audience of the events that transpired in history as well as tries to provide a first-hand experience of the same through the dramatization of story. This makes a huge shift and progress from the conventional forms of biography writing as we know and progresses to a form of ‘New Biography’ that as Belén Vidal states is a rich hybridity arising from different trajectories and cultural areas 4. This sort of “perpetual marriage of granite and rainbow” (i.e, fact and imagination) as Virginia Woolf states, is what makes a biopic relevant and relatable to audiences. The Indian film industry and Indian film watching audience have changed drastically over the years, and so have their preferences in films. From recent observations Lata Jha states that, “The biopic wave has been nothing short of an obsession in Bollywood lately, with more than 40 films churned out in the past decade alone. The trend reached its peak in 2016 with 12 films, including hits such as Dangal, Neerja and M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, followed by eight movies in 2015 and six in 2017.”5 A lot of these recent Indian biopics are based on the lives of notable figures of sport and national importance. These portrayals, often hagiographic, become vehicles to promote the person, the actor and the bigger framework of the national ideals. Trying to observe it from the production and market point of view, we can understand why more and more capital is being fed into the biopic ventures. The main driving force of a biopic is the actor who portrays the life story of the real person. As Belén Vidal puts it, “His/Her performance is the emotional hook for the spectator’s investment in the biographical narrative.” 6 Tom Brown and Belén Vidal, The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014), 10. Lata Jha, “Bollywood Is in Love with Biopics. But Will It Last?” Livemint, April 26, 2018, https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/u5K92q2o4hwxdFjX1zY0gP/Bollywood-is-in-love-with-biopics-But-will-itlast.html. 6 Tom Brown and Belén Vidal, The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014), 11. 4 5 The producer’s stake in the actor is to put to use his/her popularity to increase the film viewings and the director’s goal for the actor is to make him/her as ‘real’ and relatable to the audience as possible. As Vidal points out, “this sense of authenticity stems from the actor’s body itself. Make-up and hair, costume, and especially voice need to meet a set of expectations shaped not only by an audience’s knowledge and emotional response to the person portrayed but also, more often than not, by a history of previous representation- what could be called a collective social memory or even “icon” memory.”7 Therefore, the actor’s performance of the real-life person is of ultimate importance to a biopic. Another way in which the biopic consistently engages with its audience is by making them feel involved in this icon’s journey. Many Hindi biopics like Neerja, Sachin, M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story and more, portray the life of a single individual and his/her family or fans rooting for their success and partaking in their worries. Neerja (Ram Madhvani, 2016) is a biopic about the heroic flight attendant Neerja Bhanot who lost her life while trying to save the lives of countless people on board when the flight Pan Am flight 73 was hijacked. M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story (Neeraj Pandey, 2016) is about Mahendra Singh Dhoni, a young boy from Ranchi who fulfils his dream of becoming a cricketer after multiple setbacks in his life. As Pramod K. Nayar phrases it, “If the biopic emphasizes, in most cases, the life of an individual as a national symbolic, the biopic also retains the traditional trope of the Bollywood film: the family.”8 As the storyline progresses, the audience start identifying with the family members of the character. The audience also begin to revel in their success and worry during their times of hardship just as the family does. These collective feelings that are evoked in the audience also promote certain concepts of oneness and unity amongst each other. As Pramod K. Nayar suggests that these biopics, “subliminally signal the nation-asfamily, united in grief (Neerja) or triumph (Sachin or M.S Dhoni, Azhar) by depicting the same emotions across the faces of millions of strangers, as affectively connected to the sporting hero and the flight 7 8 Tom Brown and Belén Vidal, The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014), 11. Pramod K. Nayar, "Biopics: The Year in India," Biography 40, no. 4 (2017): 608, doi:10.1353/bio.2017.0053. attendant as their blood relations.”9 And because of this attachment to the character and family, the audience feel much more invested in the genre as compared to the others. Above all, biopics have become the most successful form of filmmaking in India today because of its flexibility and inclusivity. Indians today are on the threshold of breaking new frontiers in understanding ideas, roles, structures and justice within the society and therefore require an equally powerful medium to aid their struggles. The biographical picture provides a direct representation of stories that happen around us in the times and look at them in a very subjective light. It helps create and mold the memory of history, and can take on multiple routes of treatment, from glorification to under-representation. As Indian filmmakers and actors explore this genre further, they look at the multiple ways a biopic can be treated so as to fit the character and story the best. It can be extremely hagiographic as is portrayed in Sanju (Rajkumar Hirani, 2018), which is a film about a convicted film star played by yet another film star to suit everyone’s likes and motives, and can also be like Manto (Nandita Das, 2018), which is film about the writer Saadat Hasan Manto, in a specific time of his life when India was going through partition and the space for dissent was as minimal as it is today. While the treatments are completely different, both show certain stories of life that are a reflection of our society, and hence hold relevance for the audience. While these observations show that biopics are the trending genre today, it also shows certain traits of the individual and society that the viewer always wishes to see. Parallely to the ‘hero’ of the film, the viewer seeks a similar quest, within their similar contexts, for freedom, success and love. He/she also seeks to feel a sense of belonging through these collective individual feelings. Movie halls therefore remain one of the few public spaces, other than religious spaces, where many people experience a range of emotional changes in a short span of time. It is also probably why we revere our ‘heroes’ as much as our gods. The biopic therefore serves its greatest purpose today by subtly bridging the gap between ancient India’s heroes and scriptures, and modern India’s ideas and changes through a singular story that the Indian citizen can identify with. So if the next biographical picture is a story of a young boy selling tea on 9 Pramod K. Nayar, "Biopics: The Year in India," Biography 40, no. 4 (2017): 608, doi:10.1353/bio.2017.0053. railway platforms to make a living, to becoming the prime minister of India, the Indian film viewer begins to believe again, in both reality and fiction. This suspension of disbelief is what will ensure the future of this genre and continue its popularity with the Indian film audience. Bibliography Bingham, Dennis. Whose Lives Are They Anyway?: The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Brown, Tom, and Belén Vidal, eds. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture. AFI Film Readers. New York: Routledge, 2014. Jha, Lata. "Bollywood Is in Love with Biopics. But Will It Last?" Livemint, April 26, 2018. https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/u5K92q2o4hwxdFjX1zY0gP/Bollywood-is-in-love-with-biopicsBut-will-it-last.html. Nayar, Pramod K. "Biopics: The Year in India." Biography40, no. 4 (2017). doi:10.1353/bio.2017.0053. Ved, Mahendra. "Indian Cinema Is into 'biopics'." New Straits Times, January 14, 2017. https://www.nst.com.my/news/2017/01/204174/indian-cinema-biopics. Filmography Azhar. Directed by Tony D’Souza. Performed by Emraan Hashmi, Nargis Fakhri, Prachi Desai. 2016. Chanakya and Chandragupta. Directed by N.T. Rama Rao. Performed by Akineni Nageswara Rao, N.T. Rama Rao. 1977. Dangal. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari. Performed by Fatima Sana Shaikh, Sanya Malhotra, Sakshi Tanwar, Zaira Wasim, Suhani Bhatnagar Aamir Khan. 2016. Disraeli. Directed by Alfred E. Green. Performed by George Arliss, Doris Lloyd, David Torrence. 1929. M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story. Directed by Neeraj Pandey. Performed by Sushant Singh Rajput, Kiara Advani, Anupam Kher. 2016. Manto. Directed by Nandita Das. Performed by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Rasika Dugal, Tahir Raj Bhasin. 2018. Neerja. Directed by Madhvani. Performed by Sonam Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Yogendra Tikku. 2016. Raja Harishchandra. Directed by Dadasaheb Phalke. Performed by D.D Dabke, P.G. Sane, Bhalachandra D. Phalke. 1913. Sachin: A Billion Dreams. Directed by James Erskine. Performed by Sachin Tendulkar, Mayur More, Mayuresh Pem. 2017 Sanju. Directed by Rajkumar Hirani. Performed by Ranbir Kapoor, Paresh Rawal, Manisha Koirala. 2018.