The power of silence

I know what you’re thinking. You’re wrong. This post isn’t about philosophy.

It’s about Bollywood. It’s been quite a while since I saw my last Bollywood movie, “Iqbal”. Any decent observer of the Indian movie industry can tell you that one of the defining characteristics of a Bollywood movie, is its extravagant usage, or rather, dependence on music for expression and ambience. Now in general I feel that there is nothing wrong with such dependence. Music is critical to any form of commercial cinema anywhere in the world, and is one of the most powerful tools available to the creative vanguards of movie-making.

Any tool’s existence is a necessary and sufficient proof of existence of an ill-use of the same. Bollywood, I think, sometime in the past, went hyper on music. And then it did that again. And then over and over and over again. Do Indians have some special psychological connection with music that the rest of world doesn’t?

My explanation for the overweening excess is two-fold: Creative inertia and stunted cinematic growth. Bollywood has had a very uneven growth from its initial roots - while SFX and editing technology is constantly approaching western standards, aspects such as utilization of music hasn’t quite followed the transformation of Hollywood music from the musicals of ’70s to the present day’s poignant soundtracks/backgrounds. Creative inertia, however, is a typical Indian phenomenon, a fear of the new and the bold, the much-ridden concept of the “formula”.

Anyways, the central topic is a repercussion of the above, it’s the loss of silence. The most talented of movie-makers have shown the world how silence can be the most soul-entrenching form of expression. That moment of complete vacuity before the deciding penalty kick; or that eerily silent search for grit in the face of certain terror. Or the moments of charged emotions where the talking is done by dripping eyes or grimacing face.

Today’s Bollywood is garish, loud and vocal in comparison to its own past image. When I think of silence in cinema, I invariably remember a particular enactment in “Kaagaz ke phool” where Gurudutt and Waheeda Rehman are just standing and looking at each other from almost 2 meters away. I’ve seen people cry to that scene. Saying nothing sometimes says the most.