Worth: $10.00
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Cast:
Teresa Lim (narrator), Anupam Kher, Mike Rann; Farhan Akhtar Ted Baillieu, Fardeen Feroz Khan, Harman Baweja, Sajid Nadiadwala
Intro:
... leads with the idea of foreign film culture as a ‘brand’, treating the artistic work of two nations in unison through the most cynical lens, which ultimately takes the fun out of the whole thing.
Cinema as a form of cultural exchange is something that international audiences can take for granted. For a lot of us, it can be the only feasible form of exposure to other countries, other traditions, other forms of storytelling. As enlightening as going beyond the margins of Westernised film can be, there can be a problem with solely identifying other cultures through their cinema. It’s like watching one Clint Eastwood movie and thinking you know everything about America, or Crocodile Dundee as the be-all-end-all of Australian culture.
Brand Bollywood Downunder, by Indian-Australian filmmaker Anupam Sharma (UNIndian), sets out to highlight the bridge between Indian and Australian cultures, specifically through the lens of cinema, and Australia taking part in Bollywood productions. And like the stereotype of Bollywood cinema, it seems to make a blind grab for just about anything in order to maintain viewer interest. Despite it opening with text-on-black-background about how this production won’t be able to cover the entirety of that shared film culture, it sure does its damnedest to squeeze over a century of art history into its first thirty minutes alone.
From there, the documentary fleshes out that characteristically extravagant aesthetic by opining on how it reflects Indian mannerisms, both as spectacle and as technical production, before getting into the exchange with Australia. While its balancing of exoticism between both nations keeps it clear of being an entirely different kind of voyeuristic exercise, and its tidbits about Fearless Nadia fascinating, there is, to quote one of our own great cultural icons, a general vibe to the packaging of the information that feels corporate. As if the lay Australian audience, despite being directly addressed in the framing, isn’t even the intended demographic.
That feeling starts nice and early thanks to the narration of Teresa Lim, who regularly interjects as the personification of Bollywood itself, describing an abstract love affair with Australia as a country. Aside from being so full of mass-market cheese that it sounds like it escaped a 2000s tourism ad (and once again showing the imbalance between Sharma’s conveyance of cultural relations vs. anything romantic, a la Brett Lee in UNIndian), it also prologues the film’s eventual-devolution into raw mechanical business-speak. Whatever warmth it initially generates through its (admittedly highly sentimental) view of Bollywood cinema as the work of grand escapist dreamscapes, ends up being drowned out by the bureaucracy and finances of the industry. Maybe if this had the run-time of a proper Bollywood production, it’d be able to explore both the art and the industry with equal vigour, but that’s not how things shake out in this scattershot 90 minutes.
Brand Bollywood Downunder, much like its title, leads with the idea of foreign film culture as a ‘brand’, treating the artistic work of two nations in unison through the most cynical lens, which ultimately takes the fun out of the whole thing. There are certainly moments of true insight regarding the Indian-Australian artistic exchange, but the presentation isn’t able to maintain that momentum and turns to bitter disappointment the further it goes.
