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Image courtesy: BCCL
Anurag Basu’s Barfi! has been making news for several reasons. The good news — especially for the team — is the Rs 60 crore box office collection in a mere 6 days following its release. The bad news — for the public and the Indian film industry in general — is that quite a few scenes are blatant lifts from several international (cult) films. One website dedicated to cinema gives us an exhaustive list with video clips of the originals to boot, and asks: “Homage, inspiration or plagiarism?”. Another names 15-odd films that weave their way into Barfi!, showing a juxtaposition to highlight the copy-paste job.
What kind of saves the situation is that Basu hasn’t exactly kept some of his sources of inspiration a secret. In this honest, somewhat endearing interview with a TV channel, he talks about creative freedom, life after cancer and artistic integrity, and admits to having copied Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton because he isn’t a “genius” in physical comedy and simply didn’t know how to shoot those scenes. In fact, Basu insists he’s spoken about this before the film released and even told lead actor Ranbir Kapoor to follow suit. Fair enough. But do such declarations give him — or any other individual in a creative field, for that matter — license to filch? And what about the other one dozen lifts from different sources? They’re obviously not intentional because Barfi! isn’t a pastiche, is it now? Basu talks about being influenced by and subconsciously improvising on the basis of “things you’ve seen, heard and read”. Sure, but to what point?
At the other end of the spectrum is Madhur Bhandarkar, whose only source of inspiration is I-me-myself. He just can’t seem to look beyond his cut-and-dried, exposé-style filmmaking formula that invariably charts the rise and fall of the protagonist (mostly female) amid a bunch of sensationalised, stereotyped characters. Be it Page 3, Corporate, Fashion or his latest Heroine, no Bhandarkar film is complete without gay designers, snarky models/socialites, ODing (on alcohol, cigarettes and stuff even stronger) strugglers, ballsy journos, page 3 parties teeming with photo-op-crazy “celebs”, item numbers, nympho hotties, fast love/lust, faster heartbreak… And yes, most of them end in a simplistic celebration of good old, holier-than-thou middle-class values. Check out The Bhandarkar Plot Generator on this news channel website for a laugh.
Heroine is just of the recent celluloid-on-celluloid projects. A couple of forthcoming releases on the same subject seem promising, though. Shobhna’s 7 Nights, for one. It has Raveena Tandon as a socialite-columnist (obviously modelled on Shobhaa Dé) and revolves around Bollywood’s male escorts and toy boys. Another interesting project is Aiyya. Co-produced by Anurag Kashyap, the film has Rani Mukerji as a Marathi girl opposite South star Prithviraj Sukumaran. While its popular Dreamum Wakeupum track is catchy in a tacky way, the parody immediately brings to mind Vidya Balan’s Silk Smitha avatar in The Dirty Picture’s Ooh La la. We hope the rest of the film is the breath of fresh air it seems to be. Else, we’ll just have to go back to sleepum or watch non-Bollywood filmsum. Ho hum.
