When the multiplex first arrived in India in 1997, its technological promise was matched by its exclusivity. If you chose one, you also chose the other. The exorbitant ticket price was accepted because the future looked promising in liberalized India for a certain class of people. This was the logic of the time, and those who couldn’t afford it had no choice but to move on. Only, the cost of the tickets never stopped rising. Neither did the price of movie theatre popcorn. Both gradually became luxuries.
The multiplex theatre is still struggling 25 years later. The financial uncertainty caused by the pandemic has played a significant role, but could the general decline in cinema attendance be the long-term effect of making the theatre an exclusive space? To be fair, multiplex culture never really promised to nurture cinemagoing. Without a doubt, OTT contributed to this. But when going to the movies was no longer an everyday, affordable pastime, this was only a matter of time. We unknowingly walked right into this trap.
Perhaps it was inevitable that, despite the crores, even the biggest hits would be watched by fewer people now. Worldwide, the box office is struggling, but in India, the drop in numbers represents a significant shift in the medium’s history, one that began much earlier than the current pandemic.
One of the hallmarks of that earlier cinema experience, the relationship between the star and a raucous audience, gradually faded as well. While female stars have found ways to innovate and evolve, male stars in Hindi films appear to be stuck in a rut. It has lost its sincerity over time. Some of it is simply the passage of time. If the popular Bollywood film tries to be more creative, it may be able to abandon this limiting notion. However, when it comes to finding a replacement for the previous male superstar, no one seems to fit the bill (Ranveer Singh probably comes close, but he appears to mimic stardom rather than embody it). The previous stars were products of their times, whereas the current crop frequently appears in all styles without context. The inevitable crisis of big-budget male stardom is part of the Bollywood box office crisis, and competition with films from the south is also part of a strictly male-star discourse.
It’s not surprising that Vikram Vedha, with its unobtrusive celebration of masculinity, is attracting attention. The remake of Pushkar-Tamil Gayathri’s film, Vikram Vedha, is a stylish upgrade on the single-screen style film. It appeals to urban sentiments but lacks Hollywood’s ironic style. I saw it at a local multiplex on a Monday evening, which was relatively empty due to the show’s timing. The silence at this show was haunting during one of its Hrithik Roshan sequences, which were designed to elicit whistles and awe. People are happily (and nostalgically) reporting cheers and claps in other multiplexes.
This is not the first time a film is doing this, but something about the absent whistles made the film feel out of sync. Twenty-five years later, it appears that the popular film is unable to let go of the memory of a less sanitized, less exclusive cinema theatre experience. It wants to rely on it to bring people to the theatre. What had become undesirable is now valued. Only, it may be too late because the working class is no longer present. Is it any surprise that the cinema hall feels empty without that democratic promise, however illusory it may have been?
