Tigmanshu Dhulia criticises ‘bekaar’ Hindi film heroes

Filmmaker Tigmanshu Dhulia rued the state of the Hindi film industry and identified the problem areas. In a new interview, he said that the gatekeepers of Hindi cinema are stuck in a rut because they haven’t seen the real India. Similarly, he said that mainstream actors lack the requisite language skills to improvise, which is why they’re all ‘terrible’.

Tigmanshu appeared for an interview on the ‘Red Mike YouTube’ channel, where he spoke about his career and the film industry. Asked about Hindi cinema and its stars, he expressed his dismay with the state of affairs but said that he has been able to extract performances out of ‘patthars’ (rocks) as well. He said in Hindi, “Our mainstream actors are incapable of improvising. They speak English all day at home. They get scripts in Roman. They can’t improvise and that’s why they’re all terrible.”

He then spoke about the ‘big tragedy of Indian cinema’ and offered his theory about why it’s on the decline. “After the Partition, people from all over came to Mumbai. Lahore had a film industry. Bengal still has a film industry. In Maharashtra alone, there were studios in Kolhapur and Pune. Bimal Roy came to Mumbai. Hrishikesh Mukherjee came to Mumbai. The Anand brothers and Prithviraj Kapoor came from Punjab. They brought their stories and culture with them. Then, they had children and their children got married and settled down in Mumbai.”

He continued, “These people were from Mumbai. They never saw the rest of India. The only time they’d go to Kashmir was probably to watch papa’s shooting. They travelled to London and New York. These children made films from their understanding of films. There should be a hero and songs. The lack of evolution that we speak of the emergence of formula films, stems from this.”