Never Say Normal

On August 12, 2006, the New York Times did something it rarely does: it reviewed a Bollywood film. The occasion was Karan Johar's star-studded Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (aka KANK, aka Never Say Goodbye), allegedly the most expensive movie in Hindi film history. KANK was a global phenomenon and had Bollywood's highest overseas opening weekend gross ever. Of special interest to the Times perhaps is that KANK takes place and was mostly shot in New York City itself.

The decision to run the story is admirable. The Bombay film industry is the largest non-pornographic film industry in the world and a major presence in the New York filmgoing scene; meanwhile, the New York Times is for many, the newspaper of record. To a huge number of filmgoers around the world, the biggest, most anticipated movie of the year is not Superman Returns or the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel; it's Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.

But who on the New York Times staff can write about KANK? Author Anupama Chopra has written outstanding journalistic reports on Bollywood for the Times but not reviews. A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis are two of the best working critics in America, and while I'm sure they would give a Bollywood film the respect and attention it deserves, they still might not be the best candidates for such a noteworthy film.

So the Times put TV and theater critic Neil Genzlinger on the story. I can't say if Genzlinger knows much about films that aren't either Hollywood or "art house," let alone if he's ever actually seen a contemporary Bollywood film from start to finish. Reading his review though, my guess is that the answer to the second question is no. Throughout the review, he reduces KANK to a stereotype of Bollywood: the emotions are over the top, the films are long, and there are musical numbers sprinkled in.

This is how he describes the content of the film: "the rainstorms are a little rainier than real life; the wind machines are cranked up an extra notch; the close-ups get closer and linger longer than usual; the coincidences that drive the plot are a little more numerous and unlikely than normal screenwriting allows. And those song-and-dance extravaganzas!"

Genzlinger uses words like "usual" and "normal." I'm guessing he's not referring to "usual" or "normal" Bollywood. He doesn't make it explicit, but his tone is clear: this is a review of a Bollywood film from the perspective of an American who simply doesn't watch Bollywood films. While his descriptions are for the most part accurate (if not tautological), the logic of his judgments assume that reviews of Bollywood films must be made in comparison to Hollywood standards of production and criticism. This chauvinism -- and critical stupidity -- is equivalent to a non-American review of a Hollywood film that reads: "the people are a little beautifuler than real people; the special effects are made by really expensive computers; shots are lit with more than one light and are shot with more than one camera; there's more narrative exposition and more coherent three-act structure than normal screenwriting allows. And those white people!"

Genzlinger's ignorance climaxes when he provides his quick, single-sentence assessment of the central love story which, perhaps unbeknownst to him, has made headlines in India for confronting Bollywood taboos and allegedly leading to several KANK-related murders. On the film's controversial extra-marital affair, Genzlinger can only write, "it's never quite clear what Maya sees in Dev, whose emotional switch has only two settings, angry and morose." To Genzlinger perhaps, but to even the most casual Bollywood fan, the attraction couldn't be more obvious. Dev's played by Shah Rukh Khan, silly! How could she not fall for that manly brooding and those tiger eyes? Take a look at the way their park-bench encounter is shot: lots of come-hither eye-line matches, lots of musical cues to the film's title song, and plenty of gratuitous camera movements leading to a crane shot which takes the camera to a bird-eye view of the lovers, as if their star-crossed attraction were the work of heaven-sent destiny.

But Genzlinger is oblivious to these stylizations which he dismisses as excess; he's looking for psychological love but this is a film whose rhetoric of love is visual, musical, cinematic. If you want to critique the believability of their romance (and many have), use the appropriate criteria. Don't forget that this is a Bollywood film. Don't forget that Shah Rukh Khan and actress Rani Mukherjee were lovers in the major Hindi films Paheli, Chalte Chalte, and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the last also directed by Karan Johar. It is possible to describe the film within the specificities of Bollywood without reducing it to stereotypes. If you can't do that, pass on this writing assignment and refer to Rediff.com's special page dedicated to KANK, where professional and amateur critics -- many with similar critiques of the film as Genzlinger but with an actual knowledge of the industry, the stars, and the genre -- discuss the film as something other than an oddity in the New York market, but as the event that it is.

To be fair to Genzlinger, his article is simply being honest to the author's viewpoint, however arrogant and misinformed it may be. But the New York Times has a responsibility to serious discourse on world phenomena, especially those with special interest to the city it presumes to represent. According to a 2000 census, Asian Indians are the fifth largest race in New York City (behind whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Chinese) and are among the fastest growing. The Times's throwaway review of KANK -- a film on the minds of many New Yorkers -- says a lot about how the New York Times defines its constituency by race and culture, and how flippantly it deals with homegrown cultural products that challenge the usual definition of "home." Mainstream America still has a lot to learn about Bollywood; reviews like this surely aren't helping.
 
 

APA interview with L.A.-based Bollywood critic David Chute:

http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=31955