Why Film Reviewing in India Is a Tightrope Walk

Film critic Aniruddha Guha writes on why reviewing films has increasingly become a tight rope walk

I was drawn to film criticism pretty early on in life. There was no Internet then. I was yet to read Ebert. Every Sunday, though, I looked forward to Khalid Mohamed’s reviews in The Times of India. I wasn’t reading to decide if I wanted to watch the movie or not. The film outing was a fortnightly affair, but I made sure I consumed everything that was shown on cable – the good, the bad and the ugly. Mohamed’s reviews, hence, had no bearing on whether I eventually watched the films or not. They just made me realise the purpose of film-viewing wasn’t restricted to getting your money’s worth.

Later, the Internet arrived, giving me access to Roger Ebert, AO Scott and Peter Bradshaw’s reviews. Several publications had critics now, Rajeev Masand and Anupama Chopra were popular names, and ratings began to appear in newspaper ads more prominently. My first byline was a piece on Rang De Basanti in DNA’s ‘Speak Up’ section, which the newspaper had started for readers to send in their take on things.

When I reported to work as a full-time journalist a couple of years later, incidentally at the DNA office in Mumbai, I was asked what I wanted to start off with. I said, for some reason, I wanted to be a film critic, gullible enough to think a journalist could get away with “only reviewing films”. The editor didn’t ask the question again, and put me on the City reporting team (later, I moved to the Sunday team, where I wrote film-related features for five years). Fortunately, I was also asked to review films.

I was 21. Press shows were always at Famous Studios in Mahalaxmi then. You didn’t even need an invite – you could just land up at 6pm on a Thursday evening and a screening would commence. Overcrowding wasn’t a problem – the same faces turned up every week. Forty-odd film critics, who even seemed to take the same seats every time.

Things are different today. A new media outlet announces itself on a monthly basis, websites keep mushrooming, and the tribe of film reviewers keeps burgeoning. The preview theatre at Famous gathers dust as reviewers head to swanky multiplexes, where the sound quality is a notch better, seats are comfortable and which, more importantly, accommodates a lot more people (the food sucks though; the A1 samosas at Famous were great compensation on most days).

Many reviewers turn up with their mama, bhanja and colleagues. It’s a regular movie-watching experience, where uncles and aunts feel the need to take calls and announce loudly that they’re watching a movie, and people trample on feet while going on loo breaks during songs. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – why must a critic’s film-viewing experience be different? Change is good sometimes.

Some of it isn’t great. The film business is even more closely intertwined with its reportage now – as with most other fields – and few news outlets remain completely sacrosanct. You can’t just be a film critic at most organisations, as I realised on my first day on the job. Critics review films in the same week actors appear on their shows promoting those films, filmmakers are often friends, and the owners sometimes have a financial stake in the movies.

Earlier this month, Talvar and Jazbaa released one after the other. Apart from sharing a lead actor, both films were produced by conglomerates that own a fair share of media outlets.

Talvar was co-produced by Junglee Pictures, an arm of the Times of India group, while Jazbaa was co-produced by Zee Pictures, which is owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. Both films were reviewed by publications and news channels owned by the two companies, all of which unashamedly praised them. The veracity of some of those reviews aside, there was general unwillingness on the part of these publications to disclose their relationship with the film (apart from the Huffington Post review of Talvar, which put out a disclaimer announcing the company’s affiliation with the Times group).

Film reviewers in India are a divided bunch (and that’s fine). Sometimes, a Queen or a Humshakals comes along – films that bind the community together, ensuring reviews and ratings are either overwhelmingly stacked against or in support of the film. But in almost 45-48 weeks of the year, every scathing review of a film is followed by half-page ads of the same film announcing 4-star reviews.

Some of these consistently superlative reviews come from the usual suspects – a couple of websites that associate with films as web partners before release, a national newspaper infamous for its advertorial practises, and some extremely easy-to-please reviewers. Maybe they demand very little from a film, or may be moving images playing on screen is reason enough to come away impressed. May be there are other reasons.

Some even factor in audience response, where ratings reflect a film’s box office potential. I often get an adverse reaction to a positive review of a lesser-watched indie in the same week I pan a more mainstream film. “You aren’t in sync with audience tastes,” is the staple line, because there’s a belief that a critic’s review must reflect that of the audience. Nothing can be further from the truth.

For those few hours in a dark theatre, a relationship is formed between the film and the reviewer, which may leave a sweet after-taste or a bitter one or, you know, no taste at all. The review, at an extremely basic level, will purely be a reflection of that relationship between the critic and the film, unadulterated by external factors like its box office performance, other critics’ opinions, audience expectations, etc.

Maybe you can manipulate reviews, but I would like to believe it’s hard to sustain it without the consumer eventually catching on. Every reviewer’s name is attached to her or his work and honest or not, an opinion gets built around the critic’s body of work over time. Sharp, unreliable, scathing, flaky, perceptive, consistent, corrupt – these adjectives get attached to the reviewer, even if she or he may be all of those things on different days, or none of them at all. Film critics remain, after all, Philippe Petits on a tightrope.

(Aniruddha Guha is a Film & TV critic. Follow him on Twitter: @AniGuha.)