A much Wanted masala detour

From the perspective of a masala ‘nostalgist’ like myself the success of Wanted was a welcome surprise following Ghajini within a year of the latter’s release and historic business. It was even more gratifying to see the single screens become the dominant part of the narrative relating to the film’s box office performance. Having been tortured for years by Yashraj inanity (this is not merely an ideological objection but one premised on the idea that this cinema was essentially bankrupt at its core by many measures of film-making) and finally having seen this model turn a corner in the current decade was tonic for the soul! At the same time one wished for that true masala success that would put the final nail in the coffin besides reinventing the masala universe for a new age. Ghajini finally offered respite from a masala drought in ‘Bollywood’ that had been decades in the making. Now Wanted has done a repeat even if on a scale dramatically reduced from Ghajini’s. This is but natural as history is not created every other day. But significant as both moments are it is crucial not to misread what each film means. Any possible reclaiming of the masala model depends on this.

Aamir’s great gamble with Ghajini has consistently been underestimated. The star definitely started out with the ambition of enabling a commercial action venture that would hearken to the ‘tradition’. He therefore invested his own capital on this project which was in some ways more risky than any other he had attempted since Lagaan. This precisely because there had not been a major action hit in Hindi cinema for about two decades, the last two being Santoshi’s Ghayal and Bachchan’s Aaj Ka Arjun (both released in the same calendar year). Aamir in effect had to select a subject that he could sell to a multiplex audience long hostile to any ‘return of masala’ and quite likely to define such an attempt as regressive by definition. The actor selected a Tamil hit and remade it in Hindi with the original director because he rightly intuited that no one in the Bollywood firmament was capable of giving masala a true makeover. Ghajini could be sold as an action film but also as a thriller. The Memento angle itself proved to be a positive as it allowed the audiences to believe this was a progressive film and of course Aamir’s connection with such a venture made it ‘prestigious’. Again, the actor invested some serious capital here.

The film created box office history by putting up an initial and final gross many degrees of magnitude removed from the other blockbusters of the age. But in an odd sense the film also served as a kind of ‘memory palace’ (as I termed it in a piece at the time) for masala cinema as opposed to signifying the reinvention of the same. Aamir sold his film almost too successfully. The multiplexes did not believe this was a masala film nor did the media focus very much on this aspect of things. The narrative basically revolved around the idea of Aamir attempting a commercial entertainer and achieving an extraordinary degree of success. The brilliance of Aamir’s wager was therefore missed at both ends of the spectrum. A masala hit was ironically not recognized as the truest masala. Ghajini was more or less assimilated with a different sort of paradigm.

Enter Wanted. This was more or less masala at the low end or on the cheap. It seemed like a throwback to an earlier era which for a multiplex audience is usually an imagined one. An entirely different media narrative developed here. Salman Khan who was ideally suited for this film inasmuch as it was never a prestige deal and hence entirely consonant with Salman’s downmarket (this was not always the case) image. In other words the lowbrow Wanted found its lowbrow hero who added a great degree of authenticity to the proceedings. The media and trade celebrated this film for restoring the balance and making single screens active after a long time. The multiplexes were still not sold and the film’s performance with this group has never been more than decent or half-decent. But the most important bit of the media narrative consisted in passing the film off as the real masala deal (the contrast with Ghajini was only implied!) and the real sign of the genuine mass entertainer. This was problematic as it also meant designating ‘primitive’ masala (it is critical to point out that masala does not begin with Bachchan even if it reaches a kind of apotheosis in the titan and his work) as the only real kind and preventing the more ‘refined’ Ghajini from being defined as such. It equally meant accepting Wanted on the terms that it was a wonderful curiosity referencing time past in a more stable world of the multiplex film. Here too the film’s ‘charge’ or promise was weakened.

Masala was never only the Manmohan Desi brand of cinema though the latter completely usurped this space beyond a point. Masala was also serious drama with a mixture of the high and low. Beyond a point and mostly owing to the Bachchan phenomenon the Desai ‘comedy’ framework completely devastated the leaner (and purer) Zanjeer or Deewar kind of narrative. But even as these films have remained iconic and canonical since their initial release the multiplex audiences (the most economically power segment in today’s Bollywood system) have not considered these to be ‘truly’ masala. In their understanding it is only the Desai school in all its manifestations that legitimately warrants the term. Ghajni was hence juxtaposed with one side of this equation and Wanted with the other.

But Wanted had another massive problem. The film operated with a completely absence of historical compass points. For one the Telugu source material or the Tamil remake (perhaps more the latter) were not translated as successfully as these might have in terms of their original ethos. In other words the film was referencing a Southern masala tradition as opposed to a Bombay one and this further enforced that sense of it being a cultural artifact. A literal blast from the past. To be enjoyed, even adored but ultimately from a distance with a sense of bemusement if not downright condescension (here too Salman is along with Akshay one of only two major stars whose successes prove the audience’s bias far more than do the failures). The only way to not take Salman or Akshay seriously is by taking them seriously in their genre stuff! Wanted in any case pretended history had stopped sometime in the late 70s or early 80s and proceeded to act accordingly though as already stated this too was a bit of a ‘fake’ move since no Hindi film tradition was being referenced here as much as a Southern one. The two are not at all the same. Ironically Ghajini was all too obsessed with history while Wanted operated with an indifference to it.

This entire discussion should not lead anyone to believe that this viewer is less than thrilled with the success of Wanted. The question however is about defining an impasse in this masala history. Clearly the Southern industries have updated things and masala is not something to be apologetic about in those ‘regional’ industries. In ‘Bollywood’ though the burden of making the case always rests on the film-maker and star who would venture into a masala project. Aamir’s prestige sealed the deal for his film and it also confirmed his other narrative of always being able to spin box office gold out of any and every subject. Wanted went in a different direction and was immediately equated with ‘purer masala’, a faulty notion as I’ve just explained above. The wager remains open. Ghajini and Wanted are simply the bets made no matter how strong. The question is: what will the rest of the industry learn from these films? Carrying on as before would be extremely regrettable and yet one might be forgiven for thinking that these two films do not, for all their differences, really offer a way out. The Aamir example keeps most other stars away from his subjects as they are unlikely to have the same confidence in their own judgment tools. Wanted meanwhile celebrates masala in a rather reactionary way. If there are paths leading from these two films to a newer ‘re-imagining’ phase in ‘Bollywood’ these are at the current moment not yet clear..