The present is set in princely Rajasthan, while the past is vaguely fantastic. Screening as this year’s Love Gala at the BFI London Film Festival, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Mirzya, like his acclaimed Rang de Basanti, has a dual narrative in the present and in the past, this time picking up the epic Punjabi love story of Mirza and Sahiba.
Realistic films which moved away from Bollywood formulas found new audiences (Masaan, Court, Aligarh, The Lunchbox, Piku), while a rare art film was 2013’s Ship of Theseus. Vishal Bharadwaj’s Shakespeare-based films made a great impact (Maqbool – Macbeth Omkara – Othello Haider – Hamlet). Comedies were among the biggest successes, from the crude to the charming, including big hits about the film industry (Om Shanti Om) and light comedy, often with a strong regional flavour (Jab We Met, Vicky Donor, Tanu Weds Manu, Shuddh Desi Romance, Band Baaja Baaraat) and sometimes a religious theme (PK). Big hit films looked at the search for identity and values among the young (3 Idiots). The new century opened with a revival of the historical film (Lagaan), while the biopic extended beyond that of national leaders to middle-class heroes such as business and sportspeople (Guru, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag). New stars have emerged but the three Khans – Shahrukh, Salman and Aamir (not related) – whose careers began in the early 1990s continue to be powerful forces, while a new generation of female stars has replaced the earlier one. Where once the 100 crore (100,000,000) rupee grossing film was significant, huge hits such as PK (2014) can now make 500 crore and upwards.
The overseas markets remain significant but the home markets are expanding. The big-budget diaspora romances popular since the mid-1990s, produced by Yash Raj Films, Dharma Productions and UTV, gave way to a wide variety of forms, often made by the same producers. It imagined the new India that could unleash its potential as a world leader, linked to the pride and confidence of the rising new middle classes, whose support for Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, was manifest in 2014 with the election of the BJP government of Narendra Modi. In the 21st century, Indian cinema celebrated its centenary – dated from Raja Harishchandra (1913), the first Indian feature – and the name Bollywood became established globally, perhaps less as a form of cinema than as a style and a brand of consumerism.