Hindi cinema still dominates India’s vibrant film culture.
IF YOU ARE FROM THE NORTHERN PARTS of the nation, or if most of the movies you watch are in Hindi, you may not have heard of K Balachander. You may have seen the films he made in Hindi, though—Aaina, Zara Si Zindagi, Ek Nai Paheli, and, almost certainly, Ek Duuje Ke Liye, which was one of the biggest blockbusters of the 1980s. Then as now, a filmmaker from Chennai did not usually find himself splashed across entertainment columns, though Balachander did see his name in national papers when he won Indian cinema’s highest honour, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, for the year 2010. I thought I would write a book about him. After all, this was the man who launched Rajinikanth’s career. He shepherded an adorable child actor named Kamal Haasan into adult roles. And yet, despite the ubiquity of stars in his movies, South Indian audiences went to see “a K Balachander film”, which was often about women, often about tangled relationships. The director was the draw. He was an auteur in the truest sense, leaving his unmistakable stamp all over his creations. From the way, for instance, he handled his heroines, you could make a case that he was as drawn to the feminine mystique as he was repelled by it. He had to enshrine women. He had to punish them. I felt he deserved documenting.
Read the rest in the latest issue of The Caravan here.
Filed under: Cinema, Cinema: Hindi, Cinema: Tamil
