The Bangladeshi film industry is in a very bad shape because of the advent of Indian satellite channels in virtually every Bangladeshi home. Bangladeshis prefer Hollywood, Bollywood and Tollygunj (Calcutta Bengali movies). It seems that in every movie there seemed to be a dance sequence picturised in the rain and too many violent scenes." Speaking of the rain dance scenes, these are common in both Bengali movies and also the Mumbai ones–most of our movies are copied versions of the latter anyway. And the reasons for the presence of these scenes in most of our films is rather obvious: to accentuate the luscious curve. In a recent survey respondents believe that 41 per cent of the youths are interested to speak in Hindi because of the craze of Indian movies and TV channels.
Speaking of Bangladeshi movies . . .
by Syed Badrul Ahsan
It has been a very long time since I last watched movies in this country. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am in love with movies, and whenever there are good movies around, I make it a point to watch them, especially if they are being shown in good, spacious halls. In the three years I spent in London, it was sheer thrill walking down to Kensington High Street and dropping myself on to one of the many seats in the local cinema hall, popcorn in hand, and watching such wonderfully and realistically produced movies as Saving Private Ryan. My wife was there with me. It is important that you watch movies with one you are in love with. But about Ryan, my wife developed some very profound arguments as to why it should not be watched. She was going more into the aesthetic side of things and was therefore not willing to countenance such gory scenes as the entrails of soldiers dropping all over Normandy beach in the face of heavy German fire.The reservations of the mother of my children notwithstanding, there are good reasons why movies must be watched. And I am speaking specifically of productions like Life Is Beautiful, where you get the impression that walking to death in all the joy of humour is a substantive experience. But (and here comes the saddest part) why is it that I haven’t been to any movie hall for years in my own country? For that matter, I have not found any great interest in the hundreds of Hindi movies which come alive on television screens every day of the week in our drawing rooms. My brothers believe I am truly an old-fashioned man, owing particularly to the fact that I am more into the times when thespians like Dilip Kumar made life something to be truly lived. And there were people like Dev Anand too. But do you know something? It was people like Raj Kapoor who trivialised the Hindi film scene. Kapoor aped Chaplin, and then got stuck in the stereotype. At a later stage, his brother Shammi Kapoor contributed in his own way to the decline through promoting the absurdity of the hero. Watch those old Shammi movies, or even the Raj ones, and you will know what I mean. Something of the serious, of verisimilitude, went missing once the Kapoor brothers came into the scene and then were followed by their sons. But, of course, there was a bit of a difference in Shashi Kapoor. He has always been an actor of great dignity.Movies are a delight. And they can at the same time be didactic in that very subtle sense of the meaning. Go back to the Sixties in this country. There was a sense of purpose in movie making then. Films like Eto Tuku Asha, Agun Niye Khela, Shootorang, Tero Number Fekoo Ostagar Lane and a host of others were tales woven around the lives and passions of Bengalis in this part of the divide. And there were a fairly good number of actors in whom one could detect hope and sometimes take pride. Khan Ata remains part of our screen story, and there is too Sumita Devi. Oldtimers like Khalil and Nasima Khan and Reshma still ring the bells which make us rush headlong into lost times. Or think of the Urdu movies produced in Dhaka (it used to be spelt Dacca then) and you cannot but marvel at the qualities which today make them much superior productions to what is being churned out today. Rahman and Shabnam were our icons; and even when we come across them today, we are told, by a voice deep within us, that there was innocence in life once. Where has it gone? A society that cannot produce movies which add sophistication to the mind and soul is in great danger of coming apart.
Watch, if you can, some of the movies we have in Dhaka these days. In the first place, they are pretty cheap remakes of the Hindi movies made in Bombay. In the second, the acting is primitive, and often you have that feeling that it is folklore in the form of jatra you are watching. Yes, I am being harsh. But let’s not be economical with the truth. Our movies leave a whole lot to be desired. When you see our leading ladies on the screen caught up in tragedy, there is something definitively wrong about the way they go about expressing their grief. Their perfectly coiffed hair is still in place, the sarees they wear are yet symbols of affluence and the make-up is unreal. Which woman in grief, tell me, cares about her make-up? And the heroes, as we call them? There is, truly, little of the heroic about them. But it is the acting I am worried about. Give me a Nana Patekar or a Nasiruddin Shah and I will rest satisfied. But I am properly put off by the sight of all those teenaged-looking young men gyrating before their teenaged-looking young women on the screen. What message are we sending across? That as people age and mature, they revert to tomfoolery? I will let you answer that question, if you will.One of these days, as the evening loses itself into night in London, I will take Zakia by the hand and step into a movie hall somewhere in London. We will re-emerge a couple of hours later reinforced in the belief that good movies, like good poetry, can add to love, to a marriage where power and intellect are the basic themes. See what I mean?