DAWN
Tuesday Review, Nov 21-27, 1995
The Hunt for Success
What kind of issues come to mind
when someone mentions the Indo-Pakistani cinema? Perhaps, music,
song, dance, vulgarity, and imperfection. Somewhere in between
these mixed connotations lies the identity of the Indo-Pakisani
cinema - lost, or at best, misunderstood.
I can only hope I will not be
misunderstood if I say that plagiarism is an essentially Western
concern. Even until the beginning of the eighteenth century
literary ideas had been continuously borrowed without formal
acknowledgement. Chaucer borrowed most of his tales from French
authors. All plays of Shakespeare were based on borrowed themes.
This was so because in the medieval worldview values were constant.
Rules governing good and evil, failure or success, were supposed
to be universal. Therefore stories and characters were also
allowed to remain the same. It was only with the rise of a mercantile
society and the Age of Enlightenment that people experienced
"discontinuous change." Each revolution ushered in
a specific economic, social or intellectual outcome that was
so different from the past that "new" ideas could
be distinguished from the "old" ones; original from
traditional. It was only then, that people began to care about
"originality" of ideas in addition to, or sometimes
instead of, the richness of presentation. Journalistic writing
and novel became the dominant art forms in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
But what about the subcontinent?
Have the masses really transformed from the Agricultural Wave
to the Industrial Wave? Do the laws of science, rather than
the aphorisms of ages, really reflect their economic and social
existence? It may be argued that in many respects we are still
living with the medieval worldview. The universality of prototypes
(or stereotypes!) is held unconsciously or consciously by many
in their minds. Whether it is good or bad is a separate debate.
But I feel that as long it remains so, we are quite far off
from any popular protest against plagiarism.
This does not mean that trends
never change in our cinema. But trends are reflected in content,
not in the form. For instance, a movie from the eighties may
have more gunshots in it than a movie of the fifties. Yet the
"form," which consists of the basic ingredients of
the "formula" (songs, dances, fights, emotional conflict,
comedy and a compromising ending) remain unchanged over decades.
It is partially through the consistency of form that plagiarism
becomes easy. Since all films have the same ingredients, it
is possible to take a few ingredients from someone else's production
and put them into your own flask. People expect all films to
have the same formula, therefore they are happy to forgive common
ingredients. Just as listeners to old daastans in our
medieval bazaars did not mind if the story-teller blended incidents
from an old tale into his own, or even if he retold an old favourite
in its entirety.
This takes us to the next important
issue, the "formula film." A formula film can be defined
as one that compromises the integrity of plot in order to accommodate
ingredients of a set formula. These ingredients have just been
mentioned above. I also feel that there are possibilities of
conveying the messages even within the scope of the formula
film. Nor does a formula filmmaker have to necessarily give
up the aesthetics of good art. Pyasa (1957), Mughal-e-Azam
(1962), and, recently Mujhay Insaaf Chahiye (1990)
are formula films which may also pass the test of good
films. In Pakistan Arman (1966) would probably stand
out as the best example although the message contained in it
is merely esthetical unlike the above mentioned distinct political
points of view.
One cannot close a discussion
on formula film without exploring some of its chief elements:
music, song and the typically emotionally Indo-Pakistan type
of emotional conflict. The function of music has been explored
in detail in a previous article of this series (November 7).
Here I will only add one more point, the function of songs in
our films is moderated by the interaction between the power
of music and the exact dramatic moment where it occurs in that
film. For instance, all drama (or film) essentially evokes a
kind of fear, excitement or anxiety when it reaches the crisis,
or sometimes, the climax. In an Indo-Pakistani film this feeling
(which is the sum total of the experience of watching a drama)
is likely to be heightened with the help of a song consisting
appropriate notes and wording. This is unique about the Indo-Pakistani
cinema. True, songs appear in other cinemas of the world too
(in fact songs were often used to bring about crisis or resolution
in the ancient Greek theatre as well), but where else do they
cover the enormous range of situations as they do in the Indo-Pakistani
cinema?
A striking note about our songs
is that more mainstream poets have contributed their talents
in this direction than, for instance, in Hollywood. In the western
literary tradition we seldom hear great poets writing songs
for musical films whereas in the Indo-Pakistani cinema most
of the great names of literature since the 1940s have also appeared
on film credits. Hence one is reminded of Majaz, Sahir, Shakeel,
Faraz, Suroor Barabankvi, Qateel, Saifur Rehman Saif, Majrooh
Sultanpuri and a horde more. Even that biggest giant among all
moderns, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, was hired into writing lyrics for
films more than once. Songs from Jago Huva Savera (1962)
and Qasam Uss Waqt Ki (1968) still adorn his anthology,
Sham-e-Shehr-e-Yaaran. Yet the list of such poets does
not only include the moderns, but goes back to cover some of
the figures who were dead long before the era of talking films
dawned upon the subcontinent. Most prominent among such poets
are Mir, Ghalib and Iqbal. I do not know whether the involvement
of so many great poets with the Indo-Pakistani cinema was a
historical coincidence or a real matter of art but I am convinced
that our film poetry must not remain a mostly unexplored domain
as it does at present.
In the end we are faced with the
final question: if the Indo-Pakistan cinema is so distinct a
variety f art then what kind of criteria should be adopted for
evaluating it? So far, our critics have used only two yardsticks.
The first is the box-office success. It helps the filmmaker
to decide how many more pieces should they produce on the same
storyline but (needless to say) it helps us little in evaluating
the artistic value of a film. The other approach, which is commonly
held by people who consider themselves serious, is to measure
an Indo-Pakistan film against the standard formats of their
favourite foreign films. This again, would not help because
there are several problems with this approach. Any film which
has fewer songs (or poor songs!) will emerge as better. Also,
if we only consider art as it is conceived by people living
in other climes then our discussions will be moving ever further
away from the heart of our own masses: on whom the popular media
of films will always be focussed on. At best this kind of criticism
can be a pretence of seriousness. What we really need to discover
is a tradition of appreciating art, based upon our own understanding
of the world and of our lives. A tradition that should take
into account the distinct features of our culture and the identity
of our art forms.
