New Delhi. Today, when we see a flood of new movies on Netflix or in theaters every week, a question arises – will these movies be remembered for decades to come? In today’s era, filmmaking has become an ‘assembly line’. The script is prepared, the stars’ dates are finalised, there is a shooting schedule of 50-60 days and in the next two months the film is on your mobile screens, but has this speed destroyed the ‘soul’ that was once the essence of cinema?
Mughal-e-Azam took 15 years to be made.
When it comes to passion, there must be mention of ‘Mughal-e-Azam’. When director K. When Asif had conceived this film in 1944, he had not even imagined that it would take one and a half decades to complete. The story of the making of this film is an epic in itself. According to media reports, Chandramohan was the lead actor in the initial phase of the film, but after his sudden death Asif Sahab did not give up. He waited for years and then started again with stars like Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Prithviraj Kapoor.
The glass was imported from Belgium
It is said that glass was brought from Belgium to build the ‘Sheesh Mahal’ set for the film and it took two years to complete. Today we could probably create it in two days using computer graphics, but would that glow be real? To record the song ‘Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kya’, Naushad Sahab, despite the technological shortcomings of that time, asked Lata Mangeshkar to sing in the bathroom so that the echo sounded natural. This was the kind of passion we call ‘passion’.
In my opinion, today films are not ‘made’ but ‘managed’. A big star does four films a year. This means he spends hardly 30-40 days on one character. When an actor doesn’t have time to truly live a character, how can he appear ‘real’ on screen? In olden days, filmmakers like Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt or Bimal Roy used to dedicate themselves completely to a film. Watching Guru Dutt’s ‘Pyaasa’ or ‘Kaagaz Ke Phool’ you feel that the director’s inner pain has come out on the screen. There is technology in today’s films, but the lack of emotion is often clearly visible.
boon of technology
There is no doubt that technology has made things easier. Today we don’t need to amass a force of 5000 soldiers – we can create an army of one lakh with VFX, but the problem is not the technology itself, but the ‘overdependence’ on it. When Rajamouli made ‘Baahubali’, he used technology with passion, hence it took 5 years to make, but every filmmaker Rajamouli or K. Asif was not there. Today the competition is about who can provide ‘content’ the fastest. The hunger of OTT platforms has transformed cinema into ‘content’. Content – which is seen and then forgotten. Films like ‘Mughal-e-Azam’, ‘Pakeezah’ or ‘Mother India’ were not just films, they were experiences.
importance of time
In olden days, success was determined by how many ‘jubilees’ a film celebrates, i.e. how many weeks it runs in theatres. Today the measure of success is ‘opening weekend’. If a film earns Rs 100 crore from Friday to Sunday, it is considered a ‘hit’, even if the audience forgets it by Monday. Of. Asif had dedicated his entire wealth and 15 precious years of his life to a film. Producers of that time used to mortgage their properties to complete their films. For him, making films was not just a business, it was a matter of respect, like the 1975 film ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’ – the producer of this film Satram Rohra had sold all his property to make the film. But, today is the era of corporate studios, where data analytics decides what should be in the film and what should not.
Has that passion ended today?
It is not that today the passion has completely ended. Artists like Aamir Khan, who works on only one film at a time, or directors like Rajkumar Hirani, who work on a script for years, are keeping that old flame alive. We have achieved a lot in this journey of cinema – better sound, crystal clear visuals and global reach. But we have lost the ‘patience’ that is required to make an artwork ‘immortal’.
