Sikandar: Anurag Kashyap’s right; Bollywood is doomed if stars like Salman Khan enable the Snapchat-ification of cinema

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Had even a single character displayed real human behaviour, Sikandar would be very different from what it is now, populated as it is by fools. For instance, if Saishri — that’s Sanjay’s wife, played by Rashmika Mandanna — had simply been truthful with him about matters that needn’t be lied about in the first place, the movie wouldn’t exist at all. It is only because she lies about the threat to his life that she loses her own. But fridging — this is when a female character is murdered or maimed purely as an excuse for their male counterpart to evolve — isn’t even at the pinnacle of this film’s problems, even though it’s becoming a bit of a staple in director AR Murugadoss’ movies. What happens after Saishri’s death is so bizarre that even writers Hussain and Abbas Dalal, who’ve been failing upwards for years, couldn’t explain it.

Salman Khan and Rashmika Mandanna in Sikandar.

Sanjay is told that his wife had signed up to become an organ donor. And so, like Naomi Watts’ character from 21 Grams, he tracks down the three individuals who received Saishri’s eyes, lungs, and heart, and convinces himself that she is still alive (in a way). This might have been believable had Murugadoss made the slightest effort to tell us that Sanjay’s brain has been broken by grief. But he barely had a relationship with his wife at all. In fact, during the entire 45 minutes of Sikandar in which she’s alive, they behave like they’re on a first date.

Although Sanjay has no real job, besides being a royal, he has no time for her. She doesn’t seem to mind, though; as she says several times, she’s just glad that he picked her to be his wife. “I’m so grateful to be chosen by a man who never wanted to get married in the first place,” she says without a hint of irony. Little does Saishri know that Murugadoss has other plans for her.

It’s quite obvious that he endorses S Shankar’s opinions about the ever-evolving nature of Indian cinema. Before the release of his film Game Changer, Shankar bragged that his editor has cut the movie for an audience whose attention span crumbles after 10 minutes. In a separate interview, Anurag Kashyap said that several filmmakers these days are using the grammar of Instagram Reels in constructing their movies. “Filmmakers were chefs, now they’re becoming caterers,” he told The Hollywood Reporter India, shaking his head at Shankar’s comments.

Now, contrast this with what Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg — the directors and co-creators of the excellent Apple comedy series The Studio — said about the same problem. The Studio is unusually flashy for a half-hour workplace comedy; the show is filmed in glorious long takes, and has been made to look like it was shot on film stock. Asked about these creative choices in an episode of The Town podcast, Rogen and Goldberg said that long takes force the viewer to pay attention. They’re training the audience’s brain, in real time, to not anticipate any cuts. With no traditional editing pattern that they can predict, viewers are conditioned to be more attentive.

Salman Khan headlines Sikandar.

Rogen and Goldberg — comedy geniuses that they are, they were never known for being visual stylists — are addressing the same issues as directors such as Shankar and Murugadoss, but instead of dumbing themselves down, they’re nudging us to keep up with them. What they’re doing for television is similar to what Cruise is doing for big screen moviemaking. And the proof is in the phirni. The Final Reckoning will probably end up making more money than Sikandar in India. And Cruise didn’t even have to wave at crowds in a Ghaziabad mall, or shake a leg on Bigg Boss, or get asked about the hotness of others by Karan Johar. If the thought of marriage doesn’t send a shiver down Salman Khan’s spine, this information certainly would.

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But the man has no fear; he’s been releasing flop after flop for the better part of a decade, and yet, Sikandar is what he thought would turn things around for him. Is this a story that absolutely needed to be told? Is he pushing himself in any way, besides, perhaps, getting out of bed? He does, after all, act like he’s doing us a favour by showing up to work. And even that is up in the air; his last co-star, Pooja Hegde, said that she often has to deliver her lines to a dupe. Bare minimum, she said, is what she expects from her male co-stars. It’s perhaps a good thing that women have nothing to do in these movies; it saves them from the indignity of acting opposite a wall for two hours.

Sikandar is also guilty of doing something else that Kashyap (rightly) pointed out. He wondered why Tamil filmmakers, in particular, are sanctioning songs with English lyrics. Anirudh Ravichander is the crown prince of creating gibberish that passes for movie music these days. His influence can be felt all over Sikandar’s soundtrack. The film’s main theme feels like it was written by a child as a homework assignment. “Show me a crown without a leader in his jewels,” one part goes. What? In addition to the Snapchat-ification of storytelling, movies like this are also responsible for the Reel-ification of music. Sikandar is most definitely a caterer, and a bad one at that; the sort of caterer about whom mausaji will complain about for years. In catering to demands, it craters creatively.