Paheli was a bad choice for India's entry to the Oscars

This is no Paheli

Paheli was not nominated for the Oscars. I am not surprised; in fact I was surprised when we chose to send it to the Oscars in the first place. It didn’t have an iota of a chance to be nominated for the Best Foreign Film, let alone win it. Some reporters still not convinced why we cannot win at the Oscars caught hold of one Academy member and asked him if he remembered Paheli. “It didn’t go down very well with the group,” he said, on the condition that he would remain anonymous, “I can’t remember why though.” Maybe the problem is that they don’t remember our movies. He further added with reference to Indian films in general, that the sudden bursting into songs seems ridiculous to them and they cannot comprehend why we would do so. Devdas, one of them said, had gorgeous women but the story seemed ‘out of whack’. Of course, for us the extra dose of melodrama is always great, not so for the voting members of the Academy.

But let us first understand the aim of sending a movie to the Oscars. To win an Oscar, right? Pretty obvious; so why do we bother tying arguments of showcasing Indian culture and heritage with sending movies to a simple award show. Serious cinema buffs eager to soak up a region’s culture through its movies will watch them anyway and I bet, we get our share of cinema tourists every year.

Oscars is clearly politically and culturally biased. Italian, French, Spanish, etc. movies have won the Oscar multiple times in this category. Other winners also have a clear common thread. How hard can it be to eke out that common factor and choosing a movie on that basis? Statistics show that the Indian, not Bollywood, film industry makes more than 800 movies every year and in recent times, we have seen a wide variety of movies that have enjoyed commercial success as well. Let us find out what the Academy members enjoy watching and send them an appropriate movie accordingly. Add a pinch of lobbying at least as much as Aamir Khan did and win that damn golden statue. Otherwise let us not bother sending movies that clearly don’t stand a chance and emphatically state that winning Oscars is not on our agenda now.

If nothing else, it will eliminate two possible posts from my annual blog lists.

“This is no Paheli” [Short URL: http://www.ipatrix.com/?p=1066] was published Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 8:50 pm by Patrix, filed under Movies, and tagged as Bollywood, India, Movies, oscar. Both comments and linkbacks are closed.

« Too Much Paving?

Touring Louisiana »

http://superstarksa.blogspot.com aNTi
Patrix: I don’t agree with your statement that the Oscars are “clearly politically and culturally biased”. I think the fact that Italian, French and Spanish movies have won more awards than other languages is more to do with the fact that a larger percentage of the voters who watch the movies are familiar with these languages than say Hindi or Bengali or for that matter Tamil. Ofcourse you can argue about the presence of subtitles, but subtitles would actually work negatively, with the act of reading the text preventing watchers from actually focussing on the movie. And it does not help that our movies are handicapped by their reputation (of being illogical) preceding them. So we actually need a gradual shift from emphasizing on the dancing and the singing to a smooth flawless screenplay and other technical strengths that most Oscar winning movies possess.
http://ipatrix.com Patrix
aNTi, Of course the Oscars are politically and culturally biased. Any movie on the Jewish holocaust is bound to win an Oscar. I am not saying that the movies that won were bad but they are just more likely to win. Also certain actors whose political ideologies are not exactly in line with the Academy voters win rarely or do not win at all. All I wanted to say was that lets us send movies that have a better chance of winning the Oscar, if we want to that is. Simple…no culture-vulture rhetoric here.
http://saltwaterblues.blogspot.com/ SwB
Leaving aside the political/cultural bias which you say exists, could it just be that everybody else makes better movies than us? Frankly I think that if Lagaan didn’t get it, nothing else will. So you’re right – let us not bother sending our movies to the Oscars anymore.
… But something tells me our man Aamir will fancy his chances with Rang De Basanti :)
http://palscape.wordpress.com BongoP’o'ndit
RDB might have a small chance of at least getting the final nod for the nomination list. The song and dance are more of a background in the movie complementing the real action.
One point I do not get is why are Hindi (Bollywood made) movies almost always chosen as India’s entry for the Oscars ? I guess the Marathi movie Shwaas was an exception in recent times.
In the final analysis, is winning the Oscars that important, since they are politically motivated anyway ? I’d rather see a bunch of Indian movies do well in the film festival circuits (Canne, Berlin, Toronto etc) around the globe. Don’t we have any worthy successors to Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, Shyam Benegal etc ?
http://tafosi.blogspot.com Tafosi
Well I suppose it brings into question the selection criteria which we follow in India. I think that the Film board is more concerned about portraying the cultural heritage of our country, rather than selecting a good movie. As long as this happens, we don’t stand a prayer of a chance. Remember, all good films start with a good story. The rest comes later. Having said that, unless we see something spectacular in the next 11 months, its RDB all the way for India’s entry next year.
http://www.mumbaigirl.blogspot.com MumbaiGirl
You’re right, they are culturally biased, otherwise why the resistance to breaking out into song etc? Not all movies with songs and dances are bad.
As it is, the Oscars concentrate heavily on Hollywood and English speaking films and the rest of the world gives them too much importance. India should think about a large international awards ceremony of it’s own to rival the Oscars-where not just Indian cinema-but cinema from various regions of the world, such as Iran and China is recognised.
http://superstarksa.blogspot.com aNTi
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11151563/site/newsweek/
Check out end of page 2 and start of page 3. Both of this year’s “Jewish” movies have infact drawn fire from the Jews. So even if I were to agree with your Holoclaust theory (which I don’t), thats not true this year, for sure.
And if you are talking about Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, I am not sure whether the “activist” theory will hold good either. I was gonna give you examples when I re-read your comment and saw the word rarely. Penn and Robbins have one statue each plus a handful of nominations. But these are two of the most non-prolific of Hollywood actors too. When Sean Penn lost out for Dead Man Walking, Nicolas Cage won it for Leaving Las Vegas. And Tim Robbin’s wife/partner Susan Sarandon (a radical herself) won the best actress for Dead Man Walking. And let’s not forget that Robbins and Penn won one each the same year for the same movie, Mystic River in 2003/2004.
IMHO a lot of it seems so true, but not completely. Btw, there are 5500 plus Oscar voters (saw the number 5856 somewhere). So its not a panel of four or five that picks the movie. However, lobbying works, but by lobbying, studios and movie makers are trying to get more ppl watch the movie, so I wont hold that against them.
Btw, RDB has just as much chances of an Oscar as Jeans (that dud with Aishwarya Rai) had sometime ago. So lets not get hyped up over that, already!
http://makeyourpassionyourprofession.blogspot.com/ Hiren Shah
Even when Aamir khan went for lagaan, there were reports that Oscars were more commerce than art and required proactive marketing. Instead of Paheli, they should have sent Black.That does not have songs and the western audiences would have related well to it anyway.
http://www.ideamani.com Ideamani
Paheli at the Oscars ! What an embarrassment for India …
Indian movie makers have got to realize that loads of “culture” and “color” and “costumes” will work only for the NRI market and not the Oscars.
http://alkyron.livejournal.com Neel
i believe that , very simply put, (as i was discussing with a learned parent the other night) – our movies dont get into the Oscars because they’r just too darned …. Unbelievable…
i think the only movie that can stand a CHANCE at the oscars is a film adaptation of something by Chetan Bhagat.
but then that isnt going to be a mainstream film over here!
india is india and west is west and the twain shal never meet (unless its a stupid diaspora movie with Apu-kind of characters) – thats my opinion :)
http://ipatrix.com Patrix
SwB, I think we make good movies too although we may not hear about them much or they may not enjoy much commercial success. Remember, not all movies nominated at the Oscars are blockbusters.
Bongopundit, yup, I end my post with that conclusion. If we can’t find movies that may win an Oscar why bother sending stupid movies that do not stand a chance at all and waste all our time blasting the decision in print and online media?
aNTi, the Jew-Holocaust connection was simply anecdotal but I guess, they have to tilt the balance the other way sometimes. Political ideologies aside, one cannot deny Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, or Susan Sarandon Oscars for long because of their awesome talent…that would be simply too obvious. I have not seen RDB yet but I am inclined to agree with you there…lets not hype it up so much.
Hiren, there was the whole “Miracle Worker”, an Hollywood oldie connection that we didn’t want to deal with. But Page 3 was a stark reality-based movie that would have probably worked.
Ideamani, I agree about the color, costume, and culture bit. After all, Oscars award movies on their cinematic merit.
Neel, Unbelievable is spot on. Hollywood likes melodrama too (no example can be better than Titanic here) but at least make it believable.
http://finite-infinit.blogspot.com queer
My thoughts exactly! Since when did Oscars become a showcase of cultural diversity!

Nerve Endings Firing Away

This is no Paheli

Related Posts

Subscribe