BEHINDWOODS CELEBRITY COLUMN

What an ironical title when you’re just beginning a column and introducing your reader into your strain of thoughts starting to flow from the mind to the keyboard. Well, this is about ‘The End’ of films that have not necessarily conformed to the ‘Happy endings’ that we usually like to see in a commercial format of a movie. While the category of art-house films have always had the liberty to not necessarily bring the leading pair together in films unless it’s a tragic love story as Devdas or classic-inspired-adaptations like Ram-Leela with only one way to finish the film, today more and more filmmakers are willing to take that chance with not uniting the hero and heroine in wedlock or just getting together as a couple for that ‘Happily-ever-after’ ending.

With the exposure and mindset of our audience evolving substantially in an otherwise conservative society, we are at least accepting unusual endings in films if not approving of it openly in real life. Ask a viewer one-to-one about the lead pair deciding to call it quits voluntarily after being very closely involved in a genuine relationship nevertheless, chances are that you may get a thumbs up for two people who’re being wise about their decision to part ways after realizing that they don’t see a future together. ‘Happy ending’ in today’s day and age is not what the audience wants to see in films but that which will be a happy ending for the respective couple based on the character etched on-screen by the director. The recently released ‘Lunchbox’ that doesn’t even have the lead pair meet in person or the more commercially promoted ‘Shuddh Desi Romance’ that takes a bold stance of the commitment-phobic lead pair deciding against marriage and yet wanting to live together are reflections of a new level of acceptance for ‘The End’ in a mainstream movie.

Visionaries of cinema like K Balachander or Balu Mahendra who made films so much ahead of their time with unpredictable climaxes have now inspired another round of less-treaded path in the story’s climax among the new gen directors. We did have a tragic ‘Punnagai Mannan’ or a ‘Mugavari’ or ‘Marupadiyum’ with the lead pair not ending up in marriage/re-marriage for a cause that the protagonist puts on a higher pedestal than the partner in question. But radical decisions revolting the societal norms of raising a child alone as a single parent as in ‘Paa’ or ‘Salaam Namaste’ for example have now started taking a stance on how the characters don’t let society decide what should be the final decision in their lives. Barring a few films of their likes, take any regular commercial cinema of the 80s or 90s and you’ll find that a pre-marital or an accidental or careless unison will necessarily end up in a socially acceptable solution as marriage. Films of this decade like ‘Aadhalaal Kaadhal Seiveer’ with the female protagonist refusing to marry the guy who doesn’t stand by her when it matters, are altered standpoints as compared to traditional depictions when a progeny is involved. It’s a different thing that the message of the film was to tug your heartstring and show who the victim finally was and brings about a larger message to teenagers but we do live in times where films ending with their lead characters against marriage as the ultimate call are increasingly challenging the classic conventions portrayed in Indian cinema.

A different ending from what the audience expects or wants can also backfire in some cases with producers changing their prints with newly inserted climaxes doing their re-distribution time around theatres. But that’s a line that directors and producers should carefully tread after analyzing what will work or tank at the box-office given the plot of the film, magnitude of the budget, risk appetite, demands of the script and the star value of the cast. That way, upcoming actors can get more experimental than the image-conscious stars with scripts that deviate from the predictable happy ending. And the film on the whole has to make sense too besides the surprise element culminating in the climax.

However if you’ve to bring about change at a larger level in the way our movies are perceived or predicted with how the movie is going to end anyway, the responsibility rests with cash-rich production houses, hit-making directors and super stars with a guaranteed opening weekend. Such films of big stars and banners garner the maximum representation in international markets who are being fed a similar if not the same kind of hero-worship and good over evil content. If the world needs to view our kind of experimental attempts happening until now in relatively smaller films with smaller stars, we will need to push the envelope of comfort a little more with well-established stars and get more of them to embrace unconventional or unpredictable ending to a film. Probably then, we can point to our movie industry and say ‘And they made films happily ever after’.