Superboys of Malegaon: Piracy can’t be condoned, but Reema Kagti’s film believes it’s essential to the survival of theatres

Also read – Mrs: Sanya Malhotra is Bollywood’s posterchild for smash-the-patriarchy cinema, and her Neglected Housewife trilogy is one for the ages

Nasir rounds up his buddies, and with cobbled-together savings, they create a spoof of the iconic Hindi film Sholay. It plays like gangbusters, and Nasir becomes an overnight sensation in his small town. Superboys of Malegaon attempts to juggle several narratives, often unconvincingly. But among the few points that it is able to make with relative conviction is that sometimes, an act of cinematic piracy can fuel the theatrical ecosystem. One cannot survive without the other.

A still from Superboys of Malegaon.

The fact that Nasir and his friends choose to rip off Sholay adds a layer of nuance to this theory. Like several other entries in the filmography of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, the curry western is essentially the product of plagiarism. And yet, it was able to generate more money in theatres than any Indian film before it. Whenever Akhtar is asked about the — to put it politely — inspiration behind his scripts, he tends to sheepishly shrug the question off. He did this again in Angry Young Men, the recent documentary series designed to deify his work, and to forgive him of all his trespasses.

Tipping its hat to everything from Lagaan to Harishchandrachi Factory, comedian-filmmaker Varun Grover’s screenplay hits all the familiar beats, but stops about five steps short of being formulaic. Friends fall apart; hearts are broken and repaired like the tyres of a worn-out bicycle; dreams are crushed; desires are unfulfilled. There is jealousy, resentment, euphoria. Following the success of his first spoof, Nasir rejects his friend Farogh’s idea to create something original. Played by the perennially peeved Viineet Kumar Siingh, Farogh storms off to Mumbai, and isn’t seen again until much later in the film. Left to fend for himself, like Salim Khan after Javed Akhtar’s decision to sever their creative partnership, Nasir resolves to recapture his early success.

As he makes one spoof film after another, the crowds grow larger. Local theatres simply can’t accommodate more people, or more shows. At one venue, Nasir’s films are screened six times a day. Detrimental as it might be to certain stakeholders, the movie suggests, piracy is a necessary evil, not an existential threat. In order for cinema to survive, pirates must be allowed to sail the high seas. In 2019, the French New Wave icon Jean-Luc Godard donated €1,000 to a fund for James Climent, a photographer who was indicted for violating copyright laws. In an interview with the magazine Les Inrockuptibles, Godard declared “There is no such thing as intellectual property. Copyright really isn’t feasible. An author has no rights. I have no rights. I have only duties.”

In addition to his symbolic donation of €1,000, Godard also sent Climent a handwritten note that included a picture of a sailboat and the words, “Surcouf, Jean-Luc Godard” — a reference, according to the New York Times, to a French pirate. Godard isn’t the only notable filmmaker to have taken a lenient stance on illegal file-sharing. “Piracy has been the most successful form of distribution worldwide,” said the legendary German director Werner Herzog at an event in Switzerland, responding to a Ukrainian man who admitted that he had watched most of Herzog’s films illegally. “If someone like you steals my films through the internet or whatever, fine, you have my blessing,” the filmmaker told him.

A still from Superboys of Malegaon.

Heck, Deadpool wouldn’t exist had a mysterious someone not leaked test footage online. Closer home, Anurag Kashyap has often declared that he wouldn’t have had a career were his early films not shared, under the table and against the law. In fact, Kashyap grew up in a society where hard disks with terabytes of international cinema were exchanged by college students as if they were some kind of narcotic substance. For many pirates, cinema is a drug. Some of them are doing more for film preservation than most major studios; sourcing, cleaning, subtitling and sharing movies that human beings can no longer access. Streaming platforms are becoming increasingly influential, and they’ve made it clear that they do not have the cloud space for classic cinema, even if they seem to magically make room for new seasons of Too Hot to Handle.

Read more – Tees movie review: Dibakar Banerjee’s unreleased saga is ambitious, intimate, and incendiary

Calling for the release of Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde from prison in Sweden, director Lexi Alexander declared in an interview with the Guardian, “You know what statistics are bullsh*t? The ones stated by the MPAA about losses due to piracy. Piracy has not been proven to hurt box office numbers — on the contrary, several studies say it may have boosted the bottom line.” The Tamil filmmaker Vetrimaaran admitted at an event in 2011 that ‘pirated DVDs are bad’, but was quick to acknowledge the role they have played in educating an entire generation of directors. “Otherwise, we would have been restricted to a stereotyped manner of directing movies,” he said.

There is, however, no denying that piracy causes significant losses to the film business. Although there’s an argument to be made that nobody would’ve watch Game Changer even if they were given free tickets, the fact that the movie was leaked online on day one must’ve hurt numbers. Having fed his fans with nonsense, Nasir finds himself at a creative crossroads when he finally decides to direct something original in Superboys of Malegaon. Parallels can clearly be observed in the real world. Spoiled by one Deewaar clone after another, Indian audiences don’t seem to have the money or time for smaller films, films like Superboys of Malegaon. An industry that has survived for so long by simply pandering to the audience cannot craft an identity of its own; its identity will be decided by the same audience that enables it.