Filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan feels that Bollywood is ‘badly stereotyped’ and does not represent Hindi cinema. According to a PTI report, the auteur said that Bollywood cinema represents a different world.
“I wouldn’t call the cinema made in Mumbai as Bollywood. That’s a different kind of cinema. In Hindi cinema, there are people making better films. There are attempts being made,” he said. “It is badly stereotyped. It is like a mould where everything fits in,” he added.
In a recent interview, the director said that categorizing movies in different languages as ‘regional cinema’ is wrong. “We have this wrong habit of calling films made in different languages as ‘regional cinema’. It is a very wrong term. People think Hindi cinema is national cinema. No, it is not. We are all national cinema [sic]. So it is very important for audiences to see films that are outside their respective language and regions,” he said before adding that Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray was the only one who ‘transcended this barrier’.
The director, whose film Pinneyum released recently, has always been vocal about his opinions on commercial films. He criticised South Indian directors for choosing the easy path. “The audience is going towards films which have violence. In Malayalam cinema, it has become a commercial element with a lot of bloodshed, killing and rowdyism. That works. There is an audience for that,” he said.
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Known for his strong portrayal of women, the director also called out films which reduced women to mere objects of affection for the male lead. “These days for romantic scenes, you need 40-50 extras, both men and women. Men should look rowdy, women should look like very loose characters. This is romance. They either sing with the hero or heroine, or dance with them. That has become the norm. When you make a film and show just simplicity, they (audience) say ‘We don’t understand’. But they understand this ludicrous thing,” Gopalakrishnan said.
Read: The Adoor Gopalakrishnan Interview
Pinneyum, the director’s latest film after eight years, has received mixed reviews. The film is about a ‘law-abiding, god-fearing’ middle-class family that gets drawn into crime.
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