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Arts and life reporter Aparita Bhandari joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning Bollywood questions. Who is the Brad Pitt of Bollywood? Why is CGI so bad in Indian movies? What are the must watch Bollywood movies? Answers to these questions and many more await on Bollywood Support.
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00:00I'm Aparita Bhandari, arts and culture reporter and the host of Kabardar podcast.
00:05Let's answer some questions from the internet. This is Bollywood Support.
00:14Little Pastel wants to know why is Bollywood called Bollywood? The Indian film industry,
00:21the major part of it, the Hindi language cinema, is based out of Mumbai, which at one point,
00:28after India was colonized and such, was known as Bombay in west of India in a state or province
00:34called Maharashtra. So this is where these big budget blockbuster movies are made. Now,
00:40Bollywood outside of India is often thought of as all of the movies being made in India. So that
00:46would be that thousand plus movies juggernaut that we often talk about when we talk about Indian movies.
00:52Now, a lot of people in India often don't like the term Bollywood. They think it's a little
00:57pejorative. So they will often call it Indian cinema or Hindi language cinema, kind of trying
01:03to define it that way. But really, everybody calls it Bollywood. All right, next question.
01:10Bellhop Girl wants to know why do all Bollywood movies have songs in them? Most Bollywood movies
01:17do have songs in them. There are even some that are entirely in song. If you look at any of
01:22our
01:22traditional arts, folk arts, music and song is a big part of that. The Parsi theater tradition,
01:28especially from which the Indian film industry drew quite a bit or many other regional plays or
01:35other forms of storytelling. They all have definitely a lot of song and dance involved. If you look at
01:43Hollywood cinema, like often you have a background score, right? You'll hear the music going on in the
01:48background. So in Bollywood, it's very much the foreground. Often the actors and actresses will
01:54break into song. This is especially true of the movies of a prior era. So for, you know, 50s, 60s,
02:0370s, 80s, even up to the 90s. If you look at contemporary cinema coming out of India these days,
02:10even Bollywood, which is the sort of big commercial cinema, you'll notice that a lot of those aesthetics
02:15of having these songs more as background score has come. But we still retain that idea of the movies
02:22often breaking for song and dance, especially if there's an event like a family wedding or some kind
02:29of a talent show or something, you'll definitely have a song and dance break. LOL underscore panda
02:35is saying, today I learned that the majority of Bollywood films use a playback singer to sing the song
02:42in the films. Bollywood has kind of perfected that whole art of lip syncing. So most of our actors and
02:51actresses,
02:51I can only think of maybe one or two who in one or two movies have actually sung their own
02:56songs, but most of
02:57them have actually never sung a song. They're not trained. So what we do have is playback singers like Lata
03:03Mangeshkar. She was known as the Nightingale of India because she has this lovely, sweet, trilling,
03:09very soprano voice. She sang for most of the actresses right until the late 90s into the kind
03:19of, you know, early 2000s. So you have this entire industry of playback singers. So these are actually
03:24trained vocalists. Lata Mangeshkar was one, her younger sister Asha Bosley was another. And then,
03:31you know, there's a whole legion of male playback singers. Oftentimes what would happen, in fact,
03:36is that these playback singers would become synonymous with a particular actor. So for instance,
03:42Mukesh was often known as the voice of Raj Kapoor. When Mukesh died, Raj Kapoor said that his voice has
03:48died. So there is this very close relationship between often playback singers and actors. And then
03:56playback singers in their own right have become legitimate stars. They're celebrities. These days,
04:02of course, there are a lot of these singing shows that happen. And so these playback singers come
04:08on there. But yeah, Bollywood playback singing is a whole industry in itself.
04:14Nick7654 is asking, who is the Brad Pitt of Bollywood? That would probably be Amitabh Bachchan. He's
04:21still one of the biggest superstars. A kind of mix of maybe Clint Eastwood and Al Pacino. That's the kind
04:28of vibe. But a more Brad Pitt contemporary would probably be Shah Rukh Khan. He is currently the
04:33biggest superstar of Indian commercial cinema, mainstream cinema, Bollywood. There was a time
04:40when there were the three Khans that ruled Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, Amir Khan, Salman Khan. But Shah Rukh Khan,
04:46without doubt, is definitely the king. Lord of Abyss is asking,
04:52essential art house or non-conventional cinemas of 80s, 90s era of Hindi film industry, question mark.
05:00So I would say that the 50s, 60s kind of is the what a lot of people would call the
05:04golden age. But
05:05then after that, in the 70s comes a lot of the masala films, the commercial films, what we truly
05:11associate with Bollywood films these days, you know, that whole sort of mishmash of action and
05:17romance and comedy and drama, that whole kind of melodramatic piece. So really, in the 70s, I would
05:23say, you know, there was this establishment of what was called parallel cinema. So that's what we used to
05:28call our art house or indie cinema. You have a lot of directors, you know, Sham Benegal, Govin Dilhani,
05:37like a lot of people that were making these kind of movies that weren't necessarily that mainstream
05:44masala film. I'm thinking of movies like Ankur or Manthan, or, you know, there's a movie called
05:52Mandi, really powerful movies that are talking about class issues, caste issues, issues about women's
06:01rights, you know, depicting life in rural India. And then more recently, I would say, in the 80s or 90s
06:10that you're referring to, there was also this movement of these kind of independent cinema
06:16coming out of that sort of mainstream industry. So it's not completely art house, but a more gentle
06:24kind of more realistic kind of cinema, which often we were calling Hindi cinema, because get it? Hindi,
06:31Hindi. There was a movie that came out by Kiran Rao a while ago called Mumbai Diaries. There was another
06:39movie called The Lunchbox by Ritesh Patra. Even some of the bigger directors have taken that approach.
06:45Most recently, there was a movie called Masaan, dealt with cast. And the director of that film,
06:52Neeraj Khevan, himself is a Dalit filmmaker, somebody who would, you know, one would classify him as
06:58previously known as untouchables. He now has become somebody to watch out for in the Indian industry,
07:07and recently had a film called Homebound, which is now available to watch on a streaming platform.
07:14Sanatkar Sapa is asking, why do Bollywood stars who talk normally in Hindi when they're speaking,
07:21suddenly speech to Punjabi, tenu menu, etc. when singing? Really, this is a reflection of who is
07:28writing the songs. And if you think about it, the Indian film industry is really reflecting the
07:34diversity, the multi-ethnic backdrop that is India, right? So a lot of the people who make up the
07:41industry come from these backgrounds. And in fact, if you look at some of the beginnings of the Indian
07:46film industry or of Bollywood, there is a lot of Muslim influence. It was the kind of high art of
07:53poetry was in Urdu. So that's what they would often write in. And then, you know, you had different
07:59writers come in. Neeraj was one who was once asked to just write songs in Hindi. So a lot of
08:06lovely Hindi
08:06songs like Rangila Reh became a part of cinema history. And then, of course, there is a strong
08:12Punjabi influence, like the Indian film industry is made up of a lot of Punjabis. They will bring their
08:19kind of language to it as well. So suddenly, they are switching from Hindi to Punjabi in the songs.
08:26But then if you have a movie set, or with Bengali characters, for instance, there might be a little
08:32bit of Bengali that comes in, or there might be a little bit of Gujarati that comes in. Or these
08:36days,
08:36there might be a little bit of Tamarul that comes in. India is a multi-ethnic country. So naturally,
08:41some of that will be reflected in its songs and dialogues.
08:46Hari Khandabolu is saying, RRR is Tollywood, not Bollywood, hashtag Telugu. So Hari, yes,
08:55I agree. RRR is definitely Telugu cinema, and really has taken the world, I guess, by storm.
09:02It's interesting, though, Tollywood is Telugu cinema for sure. But also, in India, the Bengali
09:09film industry, because it was based out of Tollyganj, it's often also called Tollywood. So it's a little
09:13confusing. But we're so in India, you've got Bollywood, you've got Tollywood, so Telugu film
09:19industry, but also Bengali film industry, you've got Kollywood, which is the Tamil cinema, which is
09:25based out of Chennai. So you've got a whole range of films that are being made in India across regionally,
09:30you've got Gujarati films, Punjabi films, Assamese films, films from Kannada films, all sorts of films
09:37being made. And they're not all Bollywood. But outside of India, Bollywood has kind of become this
09:43catch-all kind of phrase for all the films that are being made from India. So often it gets confusing,
09:50but you're right. RRR is not Bollywood, although Bollywood is now taking a lot of lessons from Telugu
09:59cinema and trying to make blockbusters of their own. At Ceteris Parish, with a wonderful
10:07owl icon, asking, tell me one mainstream Bollywood movie with Dalit characters. India has a very
10:14stringent caste system, which still is observed to this day, according to which people were divided
10:20into different sections of the society. And so the Dalits were the ones who were out of caste,
10:28or they used to be called the untouchables. A Dalit person would, for instance, not be allowed to eat
10:34from the same plate or drink from the same well. They wouldn't be allowed to enter the temple
10:39premises. Dalit characters have been a part of Indian films in a sense that sometimes when they
10:48would show ideas of oppression, then you would have Dalit characters shown. These days to say whether
10:54there's a mainstream Bollywood movie with Dalit characters would be really tough. But within the
11:00last couple of years, especially after there was a real reckoning in the Indian political landscape,
11:07there were some movies that have come up, like Article 15, which showed some Dalit issues, but again,
11:14made by a Savarna or upper caste filmmaker. There have been some other movies that are now being made by
11:22Dalit filmmakers. So Masan, which is made by Neeraj Ghevan, he's one of the few people in Bollywood. So this
11:29is the
11:29Hindi film industry, the big mainstream industry, who self-identifies as Dalit. And he very recently made
11:37another movie called Homebound, in which he depicted three characters who are Dalit. So you had three young
11:46actors, Janvi Kapoor, Ishaan Kattar, and Vishal Jaitwa playing Dalit characters in this movie. He wanted to make this
11:54movie as mainstream as possible. So he cast these actors who personally themselves had a wide reach,
12:02you know, young up and coming actors. It's a beautiful movie, you should try watching it. But there's also
12:07other filmmakers in regional cinema, in Marathi cinema, in Tamil cinema, who are similarly identify as Dalit. And
12:16they're making some real interesting movies. You've got Pa Ranjit in the south, making a lot of movies in
12:23Tamil that raise Dalit issues. And then you have Marathi filmmaker Nagraj Manjule, who made Seirat in
12:30Marathi, which then was made remade into Hindi as Dharak, again, featuring Janvi Kapoor and Ishaan Kattar
12:38in a story that features Dalit characters. Tal Kerner is saying, there's a queer Bollywood remake of
12:46Hannah and her sisters called Kapoor and Sons, and I need it in my life. I'm not entirely sure whether
12:51Kapoor and Sons is the remake of Hannah and her sisters, but queerness in Bollywood movies has existed
12:57for a very long time, if you wanted to look for it. There have been queer characters, there have been
13:02kind
13:02of subtle queer storylines, there is a lot of homoeroticism that often goes on. But an out and out
13:10kind of a queer movie is something that's still a bit of a rarity. But if we really wanted to
13:16look at
13:16contemporary Bollywood or Indian cinema, I will point you to 2019, and a movie called Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh
13:25Aisa Laga.
13:25Now this stars Sonam Kapoor, who you could say is quasi-Bollywood royalty. She's the daughter of Anil
13:33Kapoor, a well-known actor of the Indian film industry. She starred in this movie as a lesbian
13:40character. And this was a big deal for like a mainstream, you know, proper sort of Bollywood
13:46heroine to take on this role. The script was written by Ghazal Dalival, who identifies as being
13:54a trans woman. And it really was based on a lot of her experiences growing up in India as a
14:01queer person.
14:02And since then, there have been quite a few movies that feature queer roles. I'm thinking about movies
14:08like Shubh Mangal Dada Savdhan. I'm thinking about movies like Badhaidho. And in the art house kind of
14:15sphere, there are really some really wonderfully nuanced movies that explore queer identity in
14:23India. Hrithik Ki Patni is saying, Rekha was a baddie before it was even a thing. Hrithik Ki Patni,
14:30I totally agree with you. If you have, you know, Cher or Madonna, we have Rekha. She's this kind of
14:37style
14:38icon. She's a queer icon. There's this kind of mystery, this kind of je ne sais quoi about her.
14:46She's always been this object of desire. And yet it seems like nobody could ever come close to her. Now,
14:53she was married once. And unfortunately, that ended in a tragedy. So Rekha actually came to
14:59the Hindi film industry to Bollywood from the South and made a name for herself and pretty much kind of
15:06ruled the box office for decades. Like, you could have movies that really were centered on her. She
15:12was equal billing almost, you know, as the male co-stars, which was almost unheard of in those
15:18times. Hudebi asks, Bollywood generally stereotype Muslims by always playing the good Muslim, bad Muslim
15:26trope. Either Muslims prove their loyalty to the country or they are jihadis in most films. But
15:32Gully Boy portrayed them as any other normal characters with their dreams and struggles.
15:36Yes, Hudebi, I do agree that Gully Boy is an amazing movie. It stars Ranveer Singh. It's got Alia Bhatt
15:44playing his love interest. It's a wonderful film. It's directed by Zoya Akhtar. Beautiful, beautiful film.
15:51But I would say that Muslim identity, Muslim kind of culture has been an integral part of Indian cinema
16:00for a very long time. Right from the start, you had these incredible storytellers, you had these
16:07incredible lyricists, you had composers, you had all sorts of people who make up the Indian film
16:13industry or Bollywood who are Muslim. So a lot of the old songs, for instance, are beautiful lyrically,
16:20because they were often written with that wonderful Urdu poetry or there was a lot of Urdu dialogue.
16:27And in fact, there used to be some of these films which used to be called Muslim Socials
16:30back in the 50s, 60s, that really showed us that whole kind of life of Muslim people,
16:39just everyday kind of life and beautiful romantic kind of films were made in that era.
16:45So there is Gali Boy. But more recently, I would point to another smaller film called The Great
16:51Shamshuddin Family. It really brought a sense of this particular part of Indian society
16:58that is very much there and thriving. Initial Economy says,
17:05Will you guys agree if I say Tabu is the best actress of Indian cinema? Oh my god, is she
17:12a powerhouse? If you see her in movies like Makbool, an adaptation of Macbeth in Hindi cinema,
17:21and she was Lady Macbeth. And my gosh, the way that she portrayed that character with so much
17:28said just in her eyes. So Tabu is one of these actresses who can really shapeshift in so many ways.
17:36Like I'm thinking of a movie called Crew, which is more recent. And it's really a masala film,
17:42like a real kind of mass appeal type of a film. But then recently, she's also played these kind of
17:48really kick ass characters, cops. She played like Mrs. Havisham in the remake of Great Expectations.
17:57If Tabu is in a movie, I am more than likely going to watch that movie.
18:01At A.M. Panjani is asking, Why do Bollywood movies have to be so long? It legit took me three
18:07days to
18:07finish a movie. And at the end, it wasn't even worth it. These movies are typically three hours long.
18:14Although if you go with a very recent movie that was released called Durandar, the second part of it
18:19was four hours long. So you know, hey, if Martin Scorsese can do it, I think so can Bollywood.
18:26Bollywood movies follow that three act structure. But then they also have the songs that are integral
18:32part of the movie. So that stretches out a little bit. You have all these elements of the, you know,
18:38Bollywood kind of narrative that happens, all loose ends need to be tied. And of course, we have that very
18:45famous interval in the middle of a Bollywood movie, which sort of really cuts the movie into two halves.
18:52So you have things that happen before the interval leading to this kind of cliffhanger. And then the
18:57rest of the movie kind of resolves itself. So that tends to take three hours and change for Bollywood
19:04movies. But more recently, I would say that Bollywood movies have actually tried to become a little bit
19:09shorter. So some of them might be in the two and a half hour range. Although in arthouse cinema, you'll
19:16get some really tight movies. Another question on Reddit is how would you split the history legacy
19:23filmography of Bollywood into different eras? Indian film actually has a long history starting right from
19:29the late 1800s, silent era, 1931, Alamara, first talkie. Then we come to the 50s and 60s, which to me,
19:39Gen Xer, is the golden era. This is, you know, the time of Raj Kapoor, guide and these kind of
19:46Mughal Azzam, that kind of film. And then you come to the 70s, which is the masala, the disco era,
19:52that popular culture type of throw everything into the film action. And the thing that Bollywood is
20:00kind of, you know, infamous for, one would say that's the whole 70s. The 80s, I often call the
20:07lost decade. I mean, it's still some real fun movies, but some quite questionable type of filmmaking
20:14also happening at this particular point of time. The 90s is when this kind of liberalization happens.
20:21Before the 90s, when you looked at TV and cinema in general, we, it was very, you know, you had
20:28two
20:28TV channels. But after that, you know, satellite TV in the 90s came to India. MTV came and, you know,
20:35we were watching Friends in India and all. So the filmmaking also kind of changed. It's much more
20:40globalized. It's also addressing this kind of diaspora that's living outside of India. And then
20:47in more contemporary cinema, there has been this trend of more nationalistic films, more war films.
20:54There's also a trend of more hyper-masculine films. And there are also some aspirations of making that
21:02kind of, you know, superhero, a lot of VFX style cinema that's coming through in contemporary Indian
21:12or Bollywood cinema. Pizza and Fries is asking, what are the must-watch Bollywood movies?
21:19Okay, let's give you five movies that I think you should watch. There is, of course, Mughal Azzam. It was
21:25off its time,
21:26this epic film. The director went to great lengths to build the sets of this movie. It went over budget,
21:32took years to make. It's kind of like a historical drama, and it's got a great romance in it.
21:39Shole, big kind of blockbuster, spaghetti western, 1975, the best of kind of movie. Then in the 90s,
21:48you have Dilwale Dulanya Le Jaenge. This was, I believe, 1995. And it's got Shah Rukh Khan,
21:55and it's this wonderful kind of rom-com type of movie where Shah Rukh Khan is this boy from London.
22:03He's
22:04growing up in the diaspora, meets Simran, played by Kajol. There's a whole bunch of songs and dances which are
22:11still performed to this day. And this movie still, I think, holds the record in being the longest running,
22:17still playing in some theaters in India. And then from contemporary films, maybe I would pick something like
22:23Piku. It's a delightful little family movie about the central character Piku, who needs to take care
22:30of her very cantankerous father, played by Amitabh Bachchan. That was a really fantastic movie that I
22:36would suggest you can watch. And then just to, you know, throw a little bit of art house cinema in
22:41there, I would say a movie like Kalyug. This was in the 80s, and it takes the Indian epic of
22:48Mahabharata,
22:49and it makes it into this really tight, compact family drama set in contemporary India. So very
22:57relatable characters and just fantastic acting stars Rekha. Those would be my picks. So many more
23:04movies I could tell you about. Kidsmaker is asking best examples of an actor playing two completely
23:10different roles in the same movie. We have this very common thing of, you know, the twins, the lost
23:16brothers, that kind of thing. And that sort of double role will often happen, or father-son type
23:21of thing. But there was a movie, What's Your Rashi?, that came out in which Priyanka Chopra, Jonas now,
23:29played 12 different characters. So the premise of the movie was that this guy goes for this arranged
23:35match type of a thing, and then he meets 12 different women of 12 zodiac signs. So the movie is
23:42called What's Your Rashi?, which means what's your zodiac sign. So she played 12 different characters
23:47of 12 different zodiac signs. We have HS Nanook asking, why the hell is CGI so bad in Indian movies?
23:55As I said, India is trying to make, you know, these kind of superhero type of, they're trying to make
24:00their own cinematic universe. And it's weird, right? Because oftentimes the V effects of all of these,
24:06you know, big Hollywood movies, a part of it is done in India. The reason it's so bad,
24:11even though that's where a lot of VFX is happening is because they just honestly don't have the time,
24:16or the budget, or often the continuities. Things are done on a very rushed basis, and often not
24:23plotted well. So that part of Indian filmmaking still needs to really come up to speed, let's say.
24:31Those are all the questions for today. Thanks for watching Bollywood Support.