Epics of resistance – Bollywood and Hollywood

Level Playing Field
The Hindu, 21 August

The British opening of Aamir Khan’s ‘The Rising’ was a low-key affair. In fact, there were a grand total of seven of us sitting in the darkness at the first-day screening in my local north London cinema. Yes, it’s easily the biggest ever UK opening for a Bollywood film (100 cinemas, nationwide), but as an event the film has passed largely unnoticed here. That may be to its advantage. In India, ‘The Rising’ is weighed down with expectations built up over years.

It’s curious that a film celebrating a patriot-martyr and an incipient national liberation struggle should carry such hopes of cross-over success, i.e. success in North America and western Europe. Why are accolades in the home market – “the largest in the world” – felt to be insufficient? Of course, those with a financial stake in the film want it to reach the largest possible audience. But why should this matter to the rest of the Indian population? Has an Oscar become a proxy for a seat on the Security Council? A token of national self-esteem?

‘The Rising’ easily holds its own against the historical epics produced by Hollywood in recent years. It’s a better film than ‘Braveheart’, to which it’s been compared in the British media; subtler and far more credible. And although lumbering at times, it’s light-footed compared to ‘Troy’.

Before ‘The Rising’, the last blockbuster to enjoy simultaneous global release was Spielberg’s ‘War of the Worlds’, a film that cost twelve times as much as ‘The Rising’, but is barely half as engaging. For all its shortcomings (a lazy script, too many loose ends, under-developed women characters), ‘The Rising’ offers far better value for money than ‘War of the Worlds’: in its heroes and villains, its sense of time and place, its sizzling and solid central performance. Unlike ‘War of the Worlds’, it has something to say. The spectacle isn’t staged entirely for its own sake.

Both films tell stories of occupation and resistance. And both films have a nationalist dimension, though Spielberg’s is smuggled in with the baggage of the film-maker’s unexamined assumptions. As in his other films, the director blithely uses the USA as a stand-in for the human race as a whole. In effect, the war of the worlds is fought between Mars and America. The film echoes the invasive trauma of 9/11 and a ‘war on terror’ driven by fear of the unknown, but without critical purpose. The sense of intellectual adventure that keeps the HG Wells’ story fresh is entirely absent from Spielberg’s adaptation, as in Hollywood product in general these days. In the end, the fear of ideas strangles the drama, because it renders the film’s protagonists’ struggle to survive devoid of larger meaning. In contrast, ‘The Rising’ deals explicitly (if sometimes simplistically) in big ideas. It enlists our sympathies by presenting the hero as the agent of a just cause. Its ambitions show not only in the historical set-pieces, but also in the eagerness to tackle a major contemporary theme – the relation of empire and “trade” (i.e. globalisation).

With its abrupt changes in tone, narrative short-hand, musical interludes, and shameless sentiment, Bollywood cinema – even a streamlined specimen like ‘The Rising’ – remains an alien experience for those brought up exclusively on western visual culture. But just because it’s unfamiliar doesn’t necessarily make it unappealing. The charm of ‘Lagaan’’s central narrative device – the grudge cricket match – was such that it enabled westerners to immerse themselves in the film and happily digest the alien elements, the melodrama and the music.

The success of ‘Lagaan’ also proved that modern British audiences are not put off by the depiction of Brits as racist bigots and killers. Indeed, many relish it. The right-wing British press would have us believe that this is an expression of self-hatred, bred by political correctness. On the contrary, it’s a positive and joyful identification with a struggle for freedom, a healthy human partisanship for the underdog. At least for a moment, ethnicity and nationality take a back seat.

So the retelling of 1857 from an Indian point of view is actually a strong selling point for the film here. And in any case, thanks to Toby Stephens’s dissident British officer – like Kevin Costner in ‘Dances With Wolves’, a traitor to his kind, and admirable precisely because of that – British audiences get to have it both ways.

However, elements in the film that resonate in India will mystify most people in the UK and USA: the cameo appearances by Nana Sahib, Tatya Tope and the Rani of Jhansi, the bhang sequence (though that will amuse the not insignificant cannabis-smoking minority), the gallows-eve marriage ceremony, the singing and dancing courtesan (an archetype that bewilders most in the west). And somehow the subtitle “Attack!” lacks the electricity of Aamir Khan’s climactic “Halla bol!”

For my own reasons, I hope ‘The Rising’ does enjoy cross-over success. The film’s history lesson is needed today, in both Britain, where people are still largely unaware of the cruelty and venality of their former empire, and in the USA, where people are still largely unaware that they have an empire, as cruel and venal as its predecessors.