3.6 BILLION FILMGOERS CAN'T BE WRONG:

Hurray for Bollywood (PANKAJ MISHRA, 2/28/04, NY Times)

[I]ndia makes around 800 films each year, more than any country in the world. Bollywood produces up to 200 films in Hindi and Urdu alone.

Little of what comes out of this $1.3 billion-a-year industry is of much quality, and few films make a profit. Yet India, where approximately 12 million people go to the movies every day, remains culturally a world unto itself, immune to the films emerging from Hollywood, which have captured only 6 percent of the largest domestic movie market in the world.

Moreover, Bollywood's films reach up to 3.6 billion people around the world — a billion more than the audience for Hollywood. Egyptians, South Africans and Fijians joined Indians in electing Amitabh Bachchan — a name unknown to most people in Europe and America — as the "actor of the millennium" in a BBC online poll.

Mr. Bachchan gained his reputation by repeatedly playing the role of the poor, resentful young man who makes it in the big city — often through crime and violence. But Bollywood films do more than sell garish dreams of a better life to the poor. To people struggling for emotional and material security within their increasingly modern and fragmented societies, they offer the consolations of tradition, especially of family values. Mr. Bachchan's angry young man usually dies in the arms of his mother or father, having realized the folly of his ways.

If you're looking for a rental for tonight, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India is an especially enjoyable introduction to Indian film.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 28, 2004 9:39 AM