The latest Bollywood flick Kabir Singh has arrived thunderously, creating a lot of buzz. Interesting to see critics unanimously lambasting a movie so vociferously while the audience lapping it up hook, line and sinker, going by the money the said flick is minting each day.
Often the critics' opinion and the popular mood aren't in perfect sync but this level of discrepancy has never been witnessed before. How to decipher this skewed reaction of movie-going public?
Anti heroes have always fascinated the common public which is tied down by social norms and shackles of tradition and propriety. A little naughtiness, a streak of devilry always lurks inside the sane and sensible lot, waiting to find an outlet.
Cinema gives them that escape, that window to the bad, sinful world where there are no ramifications, no repercussions, no accountability, no punishment for deviants. All in the name of cinematic liberty!
In the past too, movies like Darr, Ranjhana etc have had the leading heroes portray the obsessive, slightly deranged lovers with aplomb. Nobody questioned the rights and wrongs. It was supposedly a mere screen character.
Recent flicks like Sanju, Kabir Khan etc celebrate debasement unabashedly. The anti-hero has now transformed into a full blown villain without an iota of culpability and redemption. If anything, they gloat over their misdeeds and the audience applauds this moral degeneration.
Is it the desensitisation of the society as a whole where nothing shocks us anymore, least of all the remake of a very successful sexist movie?
Or has the Indian audience become discerning enough to separate Bollywood stars from the characters they are portraying on the celluloid? When we clap for a Shahrukh, a Ranbir or a Shahid, is it them we are rooting for, their acting prowess or the deplorable characters they grant a legitimacy to by brilliantly enacting their part?
The women watching and enjoying Kabir Khan would cry foul if a guy like him with his crazed antics, comes within an inch of their periphery. Even if he is good looking enough, a rogue is a rogue! Period!
The predicament confronting the film critics who have to be politically correct and morally upright is whether to appreciate such movies for their impressive cinematic abilities or to condemn them for their blatant misogynistic overtones.
Either way, the current morbid fascination of the movie watching audience with a movie based on a flawed premise of intense love and its myriad facets reeks of disturbing trends in our acceptance level of all things dirty and dangerous.
Today it’s reel life, tomorrow it could be real life. And that would be the end of all things nice, civilised and humane.
