JLF panel discussion: Cinema as a code of conduct

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The panelists shared insights into how the national narrative framed Indian cinema. Borrowing from Southeast Asian scholar Benedict Anderson, Dwyer felt cinema allowed the nation to be an “imagined community”, where people don’t know each other, but they imagine themselves as a community. If Mishra’s Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2005), set against the backdrop of the Emergency, showed how “thousands of aspirations of a country, which were flattened, emerged again, leaving behind an emotional texture at the end”, Ali’s Jab We Met (2007) was devoid of any conscious influence. “I felt the movie was about nothing; it was a conscious decision that the film should be organic,” said Ali. He added, “Indian cinema has always been the custodian of contemporary morality and our code of conduct.”

The shift in narrative can be seen in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ), said Gupta. Talking about 50 films that changed Bollywood, 1995-2015, Gupta said she chose 1995 as the year for her book since it was the year when DDLJ came out, and also the time when she started reviewing Hindi cinema. “The idea was to choose 50 films that shifted the narrative, changed something, and did what had never been done before. DDLJ, like Sholay, was a marker. Everything was pre-Sholay or after Sholay, and DDLJ did the same for the ’90s through its romance within a family setting,” she said.

The book traces her film reviews, revisits each of the films and their relevance now. Gupta said, each film in the book did something differently, be it DDLJ, Jab We Met, DevD or Gangs of Wasseypur.

The other change Gupta has seen over these two decades is the surge in media. “Back then, films were the only means to transport us to another world. There has been such an explosion of things that can distract us, films have to work much harder now to break through the clutter,” she said.