Surface over substance

Sonakshi Sinha’s latest film Akira seems to have garnered approval, both with the critics and at the box office. This is the latest in a line of films created with a woman protagonist in mind to received a positive response. Earlier in the year, Sonam Kapoor won the award for best actress for Neerja at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne while Deepika’s role in Piku, which released in 2015, won her accolades.

Despite the rave reviews, however, Akira brought in just Rs 5.5 crore on day one at the box office and films like Neerja, Piku, and Sarbjit, also started off at a snail’s pace. These films had to rely on word of mouth for the numbers to pick up. That’s not the case for a Salman Khan or a Shah Rukh Khan starrer, which usually touch the '100 crore mark within the first three days. In this day and age, when there is a growing appreciation for women of substance, is the Indian audience still sceptical about women-centric films

Neeraj Ghaywan, director of the award winning film Masaan, says that continual focus on the male hero has made it difficult for audiences to take women-centric films seriously. He says, “This has to do with the deeply rooted patriarchy of our society. Traditionally, we have been groomed into thinking that men are the heroes. So one doesn’t take a film seriously unless there is a male star as the towering figure. That’s what the audience believes, or at least that’s what the makers think the audience believes.” Director of Mary Kom, Omung Kumar also senses a bias towards male-dominated films. He says, “The audience today knows that films will keep screening for a while. So, they think that they will catch the women-centric films later on. This results in poor openings. Ultimately, it is a numbers game, so producers do think twice before choosing to do such films.”

Sanyukta Chawla Shaikh, who wrote the dialogues for Sonam Kapoor’s Neerja, believes that there are quite a few factors at play, and starts right from when the films go on floors. For instance, while films with Shah Rukh and Salman are made on a lavish scale of, for instance, Rs 100 crore budgets, women-centric films need to work within a tight financial plan. “There is a certain inequality in the way that male movies are picked up. Movies such as Kahaani, Queen and even Akira were made on smaller budgets as compared to movies with Salman Khan or SRK. An SRK movie made with Rs 100 crore and makes Rs 100 crore — the canvases are larger here. The difference between how much a movie costs and how much it earns makes a difference too,” she observes.

Pradeep Sarkar, who has directed movies with strong women characters such as Mardaani and Laga Chunari Mein Daag, is optimistic that it is only a matter of time before audiences will warm up to a women-oriented subject, since ultimately it is the story that matters. He says, “When you consider movies like Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Sultan, the movies had Salman Khan, but they also had good stories. Without a seasoned star, the audience takes time to understand the story, that’s why these films take time to pick up. Women-oriented subjects are picking up now. They’ll just take time to gather momentum.”

Despite her skepticism, Sanyukta also believes that a solution is in sight. For one, she says that doing away with the tag of “women-centric film”, and letting the story shine, could help improve the box office figures. “If you give the audiences a good story, they will go watch it. They went to watch movies like Vicky Donor, Do Dooni Chaar. However, there needs to be a bias in the way we approach female-centric movies the way we do for male actors. The stories need to be given a fair chance. They need to be treated the same way as any other movie, instead of tagging them as female oriented stories. There should be a set of standard parameters for the story, where you see a movie for what it is,” she says. Omung, too, is hopeful. “In one or two years, things will change as filmmakers now want to produce female-centric films and even the stars are waiting to take up such roles,” he adds. —Inputs from Pooja Salvi