It’s a strange coincidence. Two master film makers, one from Hollywood, the other from the Hindi film industry, and vastly different in their narrative styles, had a release each this Friday. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (in theatres) and Nitesh Tiwari’s Bawaal (on Amazon Prime) have a sharp connection with World War II, which cannot be mentioned without a reference to Hitler. Each in its own way deals with the life-changing effects of such a devastating war, with Nolan focusing on the larger moral and global dilemma of dropping an atom bomb on enemy territory while Tiwari narrows it down to a couple learning lessons on how to win the war within oneself. Hugely different stories with dissimilar screenplays and yet so similar in the selective use of black and white for certain sequences that segue into muted colour.
At a reported $180 million, which works out to more than Rs 1,400 crore, Oppenheimer is one of Nolan’s most expensive films. At approximately Rs 90-100 crore — with extensive shooting in Paris, Poland, Berlin and other key places associated with WW II — Bawaal is Varun Dhawan’s most expensive film so far. Two costly films made with the aim of providing a bigscreen spectacle for the theatre-going audience.
Yet, due to the prevailing atmosphere at the box office, while Nolan arrived with a bang quite similar to the bomb in his story, Nitesh Tiwari, the director of films like Dangal and Chhichhore, had to compromise with how he’d set out to release his film and let Bawaal stream safely on an OTT platform. The truth is that the audience that would patronise a substantial Hollywood product is still alive, while viewers who would have bought a multiplex ticket to watch a metaphorical Hindi film would rather pay for an OTT subscription than venture into the theatres today.
There was a discernible difference in the way the two films had their pre-release screenings too. While Bawaal had a normal press show and screeners were sent to critics who preferred to watch it at home (kosher since it was an OTT movie anyway), Oppenheimer was so self-aware of its importance that there was one solitary IMAX screening in Mumbai, which was like a circus. Media, YouTubers, social media influencers, celebrities and the well-connected were all herded together for one screening, told that the 7pm show would start at 8pm, and then made to wait till 10.30pm for the three-hour-long film to begin. Some, who had to catch the last train home, had to leave while guests like Genelia and Riteish Deshmukh, who had been escorted to last row seats when the auditorium was still closed to everybody else, went away without watching the film because they couldn’t bear the unprecedented delay. But a large percentage swallowed the messy arrangements and stayed on simply because it was work that had to be completed. As for the others, watching Oppenheimer before its release became a social event with even high-value tickets unavailable for the first week.
Talking of Hollywood and Indian cinema, when Kamal Hasaan’s Nayakan (remade as Dayavan in Hindi) made it to Time’s list of All-time 100 Best Films, it was a proud moment. But there was also wistfulness that a film inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 gangster classic The Godfather, and loosely based on the life of south Indian don Varadarajan Mudaliar, was ultimately about cinema glorifying the criminal. Because, if you crawl the net, DCP Y.C. Pawar of Mumbai Police is the one name that consistently comes up as the super cop who completely destroyed Vardhabhai’s empire and sent him scuttling back to Tamil Nadu. It was believed that one of Ramanand Sagar’s sons and later Jeetendra, too, wanted to make movies based on Y.C. Pawar, whose rise from one of society’s lowest rungs was fascinating. But what got made were some more slick gangster movies like Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai.
And so, thanks to Coppola’s Godfather, underworld figures like Haji Mastan and Varadarajan Mudaliar live on as heroes through cinema while a cop like Y.C. Pawar who busted Vardhabhai is still to be honoured with a riveting film on his life.
