Lights, action, Bollywood!

Enrico and I joined Netflix a few months back, and one of the results is that we've developed a taste for Bollywood movies. They are just fabulous. The colors! The dancing! The rhythmic yet haunting music! The tragic misunderstandings!

On one level, the plots are as formulaic as you get, generally a boy-meets-girl with at least one party hampered by pride or prickliness, or class differences, or previous engagement to the wrong person. But a story that in Hollywood might merit a breezy chick flick of under two hours, in Bollywood is three to four hours long. Some of the added length comes from the fabulous musical numbers, of course, but these movies also dig into the complex family obligations, the personal struggles, the social expectations. A US movie would be satisfied with one token piece of dialogue to telegraph to the audience: Daddy Issue here! or Class Issue! or whatever, But there is no shorthand in Bollywood. You get long dialogue AND a musical number, in case the point wasn't clear without song and dance.

We recently got a BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice, and also the Indian adaptation Bride and Prejudice; Jane Austen is perfect material for an Indian setting. The long demure walks, the eloquent dialogue layered with subtext, the stiffling societal expectations, and the lively, intelligent characters who bristle against them. Just as a decent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice required a six-hour mini-series, so a Bollywood movie must be at least 3 hours long.

I am also incredibly impressed with the actors. My sense is that a working actor cranks out a huge number of movies each year - all of them 3 to 4 hours long, with songs to memorize and complex dance numbers to master. Most of the acting is far from Oscar-worthy, to be sure, but I've got to believe that India has the hardest-working, most multi-talented actors on the planet.

Of course, we know nothing about Bollywood, so we're picking movies somewhat at random out of the Netflix collection. So if there are any afficionados out there of Indian movies, feel free to drop a few suggestions. And it's also making me wish I knew more about Indian culture and history, something I've been reading about a bit in preparation for writing the Rutabega Family Saga, but my knowledge is really woefully limited. And because I don't have enough to do in my life, I'm thinking of learning Hindi.