Half-Way Blues

This week, we saw yet another film that didn’t seem complete, coherent, consistent: it was more like two distinctly dissimilar movies held together rather tenuously by the interval. Before the interval, Shaadi Ke Side Effects, with its light touch, its quaintly comic moments and slick pace could have easily snatched a three-star rating for its amusing portrayal of an urban man’s anxiety surrounding fatherhood. After the interval, however, it gets lost in pointlessly stretched sub-plots, characters who are needlessly thrust in and a drastic change of tone from the witty to the weepy.

A week before Shaadi..., we saw the measured and restr­ained first half of Highway give way to a pat, melodramatic second. It isn’t about these two recent films alone. In the last few years, “the curse of the second half” has had many films in its never-let-go clasp. D-Day, smart and sharp, turned simplistic and patriotic towards the end. Kahaani began delectably, but floundered as the mystery unravelled and the ending was disappointingly literal. The icky lizards and wicked witch Konk­ana of pre-interval Ek Thi Daayan surrendered ground to a Ramsay Bros second half.

Often, politics too goes awry across two halves. Raanjhanaa moved from the seductive glory of a rooted Benaras in the first half to an asininely handled world of JNU-Delhi politics and a cringingly laughable take on the fiery Bhatta-Parsaul issue in the second half. In Ishaqzaade, the spirited heroine (played by Parineeti Chopra) who’d rather pick up a bandook instead of a jhumka is made to lose all her spunk in the second half. And just when you thought Cocktail was breaking a few taboos, it took a post-interval U-turn to reinforce all those detestable cliches and stereotypes in the nick of time.

Traditionally, Bollywood films stretched over three hours. The interval then became a necessary loo break and masala movies played out equally well or badly across the artificial divide of the interval. In those times, the safety of formula mattered: filmmaking was about replicable success models. As Javed Akhtar says in Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book Talking Films, “The requirement of an Indian filmwriter is peculiar. He is supposed to write an original script that has come before.” It wasn’t about a typed and bound filmscript but about narrating a story to a producer and his cronies, with all the visual, audio and emotional effects. Sometimes, writers began with the germ of an idea, which would then be fleshed out into scenes and dialogue on the sets while the shoot was on. Mostly, writers didn’t matter; it was normal to ask them to lift from foreign hits; in the credits, they ranked below the lyricists; it was usual for them to be coun­ted among the lowest paid of ‘technicians’.

Things have since changed vastly for the better. Finding their place in the sun, they are trying to buck tradition, trying to make films tighter and crisper, to introduce atypical characters, even in major roles: a genius with psychological problems in Hasee To Phasee, the hint at ‘gaeity’ in Dedh Ishqiya. We are also getting used to natural lines rather than heavy-duty “dialogue”. Salim-Javed are not the only gurus; Syd Field’s three-act structure of  setup-confrontation-resolution is fast becoming the mantra. But the interval is still around and the three-act structure breaks badly across it.

Filmmakers say their content will do the talking and they’re taking chances. But it seems all their risk-taking cops out at the interval. Writer Jaideep Sahni once told me it’s not “the curse of the second half” so much as the curse of the interval that’s doing them in by interfering with the structure they’ve worked at. Worse, when the audience goes out for soda-pop and popcorn (these days there’s more choice on that front), it returns with its interest flagging. Films aren't just about bringing bums onto the seats, but also ensuring spending at the food counters. The integrity of a film is incidental; it’s all about a family outing and spending.

These demands take a toll on the writer. It’s a task to start building the film all over again after that artificial midpoint. But on the orders of the producer, writers have to. Shaadi... could have worked perfectly as a 90-minute romcom. Stretched to 120 minutes, it does not. Perhaps it’s time to petition against the interval.