Why do brilliant directors lose form?

Everyone's allowed a bad hair day now and then. But some directors we used to admire show no signs of returning to their best. Fans wonder why

Everyone's allowed a bad hair day now and then. But some directors we used to admire show no signs of returning to their best. Fans wonder why

WHEN Somen Mishra watched Tasveer, he could feel the anger building up inside of him. And while its director Nagesh Kukunoor sent out smses requesting critics not to reveal the film's twist, Mishra himself was tempted to send a few hundred smses of his own, urging people to not bother to go in and see Tasveer. The final ignominy? Watching in horror as one of his favourite filmmakers 'got down' and rapped with Akshay Kumar for the end credits.

Somen, a broadcast journalist with a TV network, says, "Nagesh was the voice of new cinema. He came from nowhere and started it all. Outsiders should stay as outsiders; the industry corrupts them. If he had delivered, he would have helped the indie group. But with this chance, I feel as if he's killed it for 100 other aspirants. He couldn't handle a Rs 40 crore film. The trailor of Aashayein (with John Abraham) also seems disappointing."

Kukunoor may have gone off-track with Tasveer and Bombay To Bangkok, but most movie lovers still hold out hope for him. Yet if there's one thing a director never wants to hear from his fans, it is, "What happened to him? He's lost the plot." How does a filmmaker with brimming potential and faithful audiences lose his touch? What makes him land a dud? And how come these intelligent directors don't see it coming?

Film critic and author Maithili Rao says it's because they're not careful. "Unless you're a genius, you have a limited capacity. If you're a competent filmmaker, you have to reinvent yourself. Otherwise, you exhaust yourself and hit hard times."

The Mavericks
There's a whole tribe of people waiting for the Ram Gopal Varma who stunned them with Satya to jump back into form. While some fans gave up when RGV Ki Aag, Shiva (the new one) and Contract unfolded, others say that mavericks like Ramu have the capacity to bounce back. Ramu defends himself, "You'd never have expected the Ashutosh Gowariker of Pehla Nasha and Baazi to come with a Lagaan. I refuse to believe that as a filmmaker, I have fans. Audiences don't wait for your films, they go for what interests them. Some people may think that my best is behind me, but that's a random theory. Films become best according to perceptions."

Despite what he perceives, RGV does have a fan base. Vasan Bala, who now works as assistant director to Anurag Kashyap (who wrote Ramu's Satya and Kaun), is one. But Vasan says that the Ramu that he loved from Shiva (the Nagarjuna starrer), Rangeela and Satya is MIA. "He's obsessed with background score and which obscure place to put the camera u2014 following the heroine's butt or placed on a tree," he says.

Kartik Krishnan, who also works in the film industry, seconds the opinion that the director is obsessed with weird angles. A die-hard fan of films like Shiva, Drohi and Raat since his days as a software engineer, Kartik feels these directors suffer the moment they lose their irreverence. "It gets mixed up with arrogance. It's sad to hear Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who made the first gangster film with Parinda, describe his Eklavya as a long-lost David Lean film. Eklavya was only 90 minutes long, but it made you restless. Technically, it was fantastic, but I was bored."

Jahan Singh Bakshi, a student of mass communications and videography in Kolkata, says it's to do with the fact that directors like Ramu take themselves too seriously. "There's an overkill of stylistic elements, but some awfully bad writing is in his films today. Those super close-ups become caricaturish after a point. It's like, 'Look at me, I'm so mean, so scary.'"u00a0

Audiences have also been watching Nagesh Kukunoor flounder since his Iqbal and Dor days. Fans feel this is because he's taken on so much work that his storytelling is suffering. That's apparent; Bombay To Bangkok had zilch appeal, while Tasveer's plot was laughably idiotic. Says Naomi Datta, who has tracked entertainment for 10 years as a broadcast journalist, "I feel Nagesh was inundated with offers after Iqbal so he lost his bearings.

Suddenly, he started playing by the rules. When I interviewed him for Tasveer, he was talking Diwali releases. Nagesh and Diwali releases? It's bizarre. But Nagesh explained that because he was now working with stars like Akshay Kumar, he had to. Even Ramu's Factory started out as this parallel power center, but he developed such a Bachchan fixation. He's gone out of control."
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The Movie Moghuls
They have the guts and the glory, but are caught up in their image. Many directors get stuck in delusions of grandeur. They still live in an era where their films were superhits. Explains Maithili, "Subhash Ghai and J P Dutta are in the far end, the movie moghul era. They have too many hats up in the air to make sure the director's one is in place. Ghai tried to fit in with Black & White last year; it was an earnest effort, but it's just not him. J P Dutta made good films like Hathyaar and Ghulami, but he's lost that feeling for the male loner and male bonding while going after making another Umrao Jaan. He should go back to his strengths."

Like one insider puts it, the problem is that the film industry tends to treat these directors like holy cows, bowing and scraping before them or "heaping praise, even when it's evident they can't make sense of their movies".

Maithili points out that it isn't a new phenomenon viewers shifted around uncomfortably when they saw Prakash Mehra's "insufferable" Jaadugar, while the later Raj Kapoor movies were an "embarrassment" and V Shantaram's last works even more so. Trouble begins when directors stop listening to other people, thinking they know it all and that they've got a finger on the pulse of the audience. Case in point, producer/director Aditya Chopra, who may have bounced back with his Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, but has made inexplicable choices while greenlighting films like Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic, Tashan and Roadside Romeo.

Vasan, who was hugely entertained by Ram Lakhan as a kid, says Ghai's relationship with the audience is like that of a girlfriend she's moved on, but he's still wondering what went wrong with the relationship. Naomi places the blame on Ghai's Karz. Panned when it first came out, the film has got mass acceptance today. "He feels someday audiences will wake up to the genius of Yaadein, Kisna and Yuvvraaj," she says.u00a0

The Mega-lomaniac
Perhaps the biggest dilemma with this director is that he's an actor. Kamal Haasan forgot when to stop years ago and many of his fans are still bewildered. Megalomaniac is a word that crops up often for the actor u2014 in reviews and in casual conversations discussing his Dasavataram. Many film buffs feel he ghost-directs these ventures, indulgent as they are.

Naomi puts it succinctly. "The audiences aren't as much in love with Kamal Haasan as he is with himself. People like him and Sanjay Leela Bhansali create their own myths and believe in it." Though there are those who liked Hey Ram much better than it fared at the box office, fans feel it was the beginning of Kamal's excess. Each film of his now seems like an experiment, a feat, a gimmick to put oneself out there. "It's totally unchecked ego mania," describes Maithili, "Surely this narcissism has to end, he's now touching 60. An artiste has to mature!"u00a0

The formula
It's also a mistake when directors believe that they've cracked the formula. M Night Shyamalan, who had the whole world talking about his The Sixth Sense, then felt the need to have every story of his laced with mystery, the unknown, the supernatural. One by one, they started suffering from over mysticism, a forced heavy feel and most of all, THE TWIST.

Vasan says that Madhur Bhandarakar too may enjoy commercial success, but his films are too formulaic. "I thought only Manmohan Desai and Mahesh Bhatt followed the formula, but Madhur has devised his own. I'm bored to death of people being sodomised in his films."u00a0

Pushing limits
But psychiatrist and psychologist Dr Harish Shetty feels it isn't as simplistic as the director being caught in his own image or having the ego strangle his creativity. "Even Sachin Tendulkar can't always get a perfect score, but the problem is with the world, not them. People feel troubled at their heroes falling." Shetty also points out that creative works are supposed to be defiant, so while some work, others crash. It comes with the territory of pushing boundaries.

But he agrees that what hinders a creative person's growth is when he starts listening to sycophants. "The director experiences a delusional freedom after tasting success," he says.u00a0

In good company
Yet Bollywood directors aren't a special breed. All over the world, directors get caught in the rut of sameness or believe in something that goes completely awry. Maithili points out that in Hollywood tradition, directors start off on the indie circuit, get sucked into the establishment and are no longer radicals. Steven Spielberg also comes up with the occasional stinker, but he seems to be conserving his energies to be godfather to other hopefuls and producer on ambitious projects. "Really, what has Francis Ford Coppola done after The Godfather series? He seems to have retired into grey eminence," says Maithili, "Oliver Stone was the voice of his generation those Vietnam movies, Wall Street. But what happened to him?"u00a0u00a0

Directors, like all creative people, can't be put under one umbrella or pigeonholed into the same slot. Yet as their fans put it, the trick is in reinvention, taking a break to regroup and write a solid script or in just surprising the audience.

But first, they need to care about the audience.u00a0

Filmmakers you wish would direct another film
Gulzar
Ramesh Sippy
Mansoor Khan
Sai Paranjpye
Kundan Shah
Mahesh Bhatt
Pradip Kishen/ Arundhati Roy