Movies are cultural markers and good ones make us better people – Anupama Chopra
Anupama Chopra
2013-10-01-The_Gateway_Oct_1_Oct_7
Being a film critic sounded so much fun when I heard Vita Jalaj Dani introduce me. Wow! I have never heard my life described so glamorously. But then, it is not half as glamorous. I want to give you some idea of what film critics do and what our lives are like as far our interlink with movies is concerned.
Everybody is engaged with cinema in some way and it has a profound impact on us. We have all grown up aping fashions and behaviour that we saw in films; for Indians, Bollywood movies more than Western cinema. Bollywood is a sort of cultural marker that tells us what’s in and what’s out. So I think it is important that we look at movies with a new perspective.
Late Roger Ebert, one of the greatest American film critics, once said that of all the arts, movies are the most powerfully- aped and that good ones make us better people. When you see a film there is great pleasure and so people always think film critics are snobs who just want to watch boring arty movies. I love big loud entertaining films and have a great time watching them. But I think when you see a really powerful film, it gives you an insight into life that you did not have before.
Recently I saw Fruitvale Station, which released last week in India and which is about the last day in the life of a 22-year-old African-American man who is shot down in Fruitvale station in the Bay Area of San Francisco. I consider myself to be evolved and not racist, but if I was in America and there was a group of young unruly-looking African-Americans walking toward me, I would be a bit nervous. The film, which is based on a true incident, made me look at the other side and gave me a different perspective of what life is. Again, take for example The Lunchbox, which gave me an insight into the harrowing loneliness of people in this city!
The question, though, is: why is a movie critic important. Today, in a world of social media, everybody has a platform and there are opinions expressed every minute. So what makes my opinion more valid than yours?
It does not really. I think of myself more as a tastemaker, a sort of consumer guide because I see a lot of films. There is no school one goes to to learn how to be a film critic. I have done a Masters in Journalism and a film appreciation course. But you become a film critic only by watching movies. I see about four-five movies every week and perhaps experience more movies than most people.
Thus, I am not necessarily more informed, but perhaps have a more informed opinion. I am just your first line of defence, like the front row of soldiers. I will experience a film before you and feel I can tell you about whether I had a good time or a bad time. I need to give you reasons, to tell you why I was bored or why I was engaged, and then maybe you can decide whether you want to spend three hours and many thousands of rupees that it costs in watching the film. I think of myself as testing the waters before you.
Sometimes I have what I call my existential crisis. Who cares about what I say? I thought Grand Masti was an appalling and aggressively offensive movie; but now it is the fifth biggest hit of the year! It is clear then that I do not agree with most movie-goers in this case. What I just want to be is your movie companion, the friend that you might want to talk to about movies. I also believe that my tastes are fairly populist. I also had an existential crisis with Chennai Express, which I did not enjoy at all and which is now officially the biggest hit ever.
What I look for in a movie is engagement. Entertainment is engagement by evoking emotion. The worst movies are the ones that are middle-of-the-road, where sitting through is a torture. I have, however, never walked out of a film, because it would be unethical. I have a list of movies that are so bad that they are good, so awful that they start to be fun. So there are those and there are the really good ones.
Like I said, I watch about four-five films a week, both English and Hindi. The English are usually shown on a Monday or Tuesday, the Hindi ones usually on a Thursday. If it is a Yash Raj film then it is shown on Friday morning. All of us run to whatever studio we record in. I record at Mehboob and have a standing set there. I write the review in the car, which is an awful way to gauge somebody’s work but that is how it is. In America a film is shown two weeks in advance for critics to mull and write a review and give the film the respect it deserves. Most filmmakers here do not want to do that. I have argued, begged, but it does not work. So we end up writing reviews late Thursday night or Friday morning. It is, thus, the gut-level response to a movie which for me is usually right. It has not happened too often that I have gone back and looked at a film and said that I feel differently about it now.
The tricky thing is and this is the big problem for all critics, at least for those in television, is that we also do star interviews. We also do talent interviews, which means that I am interviewing Shahrukh Khan on one Friday and the next Friday I am ripping his film apart and the Friday after that I will probably see him at school because his kids are at the same school as mine, and then it is just very awkward. I honestly wish there was some way to not have that engagement.
In the US, critics for The New York Times or The New Yorker do not interact with the film industry. I do not know if it is necessarily more objective but you are completely removed from the workings of the film industry. We do not have that and I am in a state of double compromise because I am also married to Vidhu Vinod Chopra, a film director. I am in a sense the original Trishanku because I have one foot in and one foot out. I know what it is like when Vinod’s films get bad reviews. He does not care because he thinks he is a genius no matter what. But it is tough.
The thing that many people do not remember is that it is finally professional. It is a judgement on the film that you have created. The funniest reaction I have ever had is from Ram Gopal Verma after I called his horror film Agyat an “awful movie”. We met during the premiere of an English movie, and I remember he simply looked at me, screamed loudly and ran in the other direction. Akshay Kumar also does not talk to me because I hated Rowdy Rathore. Sometimes it feels bad that what you do evokes such response; but what do you do?
Social networking has made fans very vocal and sometimes it gets really nasty on Twitter. Salman’s fans, for example, really went after me because I did not like Bodyguard. For about two weeks after Bodyguard, I had to have a bodyguard.
Film criticism has to be a two-way street. I am not some great pundit on the movies but nobody can tell me that I am talking rubbish. I really value people who say you are doing this right, you said this wrong.
The other thing that is important is ethical standards. Film criticism is finally a point of view: there is no right and wrong.
Ethical standards for critics in the West are extremely high. The New York Times, for instance, did not allow Rachel Salts, who reviews Hindi movies for the newspaper, to review 3 Idiots because I do freelance work for the newspaper and had once had coffee with Salts.
We, on the other hand, live in an environment where news is bought. News content can be bought and everybody knows it. You can buy and it is all official. It is, thus, very important that we hold ourselves to the highest standards. I especially have to be Caesar’s wife, to be above suspicion. I do not review anything that Vinod makes or produces — not even the movies produced by his production house. I also do not review anything my sister makes. These are the ethics I try to follow. There are always rumours about reviews being bought, but in 20 years no one has tried to offer me any money. Finally, as a film critic all you have is your credibility. We all have inbuilt biases but we should put them on the table and be as honest as we can.
I am often asked if film critics affect the box office. I say clearly not. I do not have such arrogance as to say that I am making a difference to box office collections. Probably what I can do is point you in the direction of a small movie that you normally would not go to — to a Lunchbox, to a Ship of Theseus, to the next smaller film that is valuable, worthy and deserves your time.
Here, I want to share with you five films that I think you should see. The first is Aguirre: The Wrath of God, a film about a group who go into Peru looking for the fatal city of El Dorado and slowly descend into madness. It is a story about the hubris of man. The second is Amelie, a sweet French film about a waitress who grows up in a very eccentric sort of way to take it upon herself to fix everyone’s life. The third is Cinema Paradiso, an Italian film about the relationship between a little boy and a projectionist in the theatre and how actual physical cinema impacts their lives. The other film is Pan’s Labyrinth, a Mexican movie, which is half fantastical, half realistic. The last film is Raise the Red Lantern, a film by a Chinese director about a woman who becomes the fourth concubine of a rich man and then realises that the only escape is death.
Excerpts from a Q&A session:
Q: How important is an Oscar nomination to the Indian movie industry and your take on the latest movie that has been nominated for the Oscars.
Anupama Chopra: I have not watched The Good Road and it would be unfair to comment on which is a better film – The Lunchbox or The Good Road. Oscars are extremely important, not because we need approval from the West, but because it is the biggest movie platform in the world and if we get a nomination we get noticed and it benefits the entire industry. It is like a political campaign that has to be waged and requires a lot of money. I do not know who the backers of The Good Road are, but do they have the ability to campaign? They need to do so because they will be up against 70 movies. In order to get into the final five one needs to have about 6,000 Academy members watch the film. I do not think people on the ground really know this. An advantage The Lunchbox had is that it has already been picked up for distribution by Sony Picture Classics, gone to the Telluride and Toronto film festivals and won an award at Cannes. It is on the radar of every critic in the West. The Lunchbox may perhaps have been a smarter strategic move.
Q: I feel that one has to be slightly schizophrenic while watching Hollywood or Bollywood movies because on the one hand you have entertainment and on the other there is art which has nothing to do with facts. To my mind there is no such thing as good or bad art. Your comment…
Anupama Chopra: I agree, but to completely box Bollywood as only entertainment and nothing to do with grey cells is too simplistic. I love Bollywood and am a big champion of it; when I criticise Bollywood films, I do it with utmost affection. In terms of art, definitely there are some things you will connect with and some things you will not and that works at every level. And then there are always good films and bad films.
Q: Are reviews such as in The Times of India dictated by the revenue they can get from advertisements? And secondly, do you think this policy of not showing films to critics more than a day in advance has something to do with grabbing as many screens as you can in the first week?
Anupama Chopra: It would not be right to comment on reviews appearing in The Times of India since I do not know whether they sell review space. As for why films are not shown in advance it could be because filmmakers might feel critics will watch a film and tweet immediately. Sometimes, if it is bad buzz, it could affect the box office. In the West, critics sign a non-disclosure agreement and do not talk before the movie releases.