Bollywood\'s Oscar Obsession

By MAYANK SHEKHAR and HEATHER TIMMONS

This year, India's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is a two-and-a-half-hour, chaotic musical about a deaf and mute boy called “Barfi,” which has been widely criticized for liberally borrowing scenes from a host of other films.

The film, while well reviewed by many critics in India, is also being flogged by some film fans as an embarrassing pastiche: It appears to have lifted scenes from sources as diverse as “The Notebook,”  “Singin' in The Rain,” Jackie Chan's “Project A,” Takeshi Kitano's “Kikujiro,” and Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton comedies.

Anurag Basu, the film's writer and director, has called the references “inspiration” in interviews, likening his work to that of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. But “inspiration” is a generally accepted euphemism for “knockoff” in Bolly wood, and many worry the movie is unlikely to impress Oscar judges on the lookout for more original works.

As the hype before Hollywood's biggest awards ceremony heats up, Bollywood has again boiled over in relentless debate: With well-received original titles like “Gangs of Wasseypur” made in India this year, was the right film put forward for the Oscars? Does “Barfi” stand even a tiny chance of winning? And why does Bollywood care so much, anyway?

This annual Oscars media ritual is particularly odd, given that since the Best Foreign Language Film category was created in 1956, no Indian film has ever won the prize. Even among other Oscar categories, only four Indians have held the golden statuette, all for films directed by British filmmakers.

For decades, Bollywood didn't care about the Oscars, the filmmaker Karan Johar explained in a recent interview. Interest really started with the submission of “Lagaan,” a colonial-era tale about a plucky village cricket team, which unexpectedly became a nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002. “While no one had predicted so, it finally got nominated, opening up hopes for many,” he said.
The only other Indian films that were even Oscar nominees were “Salaam Bombay!” in 1989, directed by Mira Nair, who is based in New York, and Mehboob Khan's classic Bollywood saga “Mother India” in 1958.

Bollywood's Oscar obsession could be linked to the fact that the industry's own awards ceremonies are increasingly eyed with suspicion. The Filmfare Awards and the state-sponsored National Film Awards have both been around since 1954. But the Filmfare Awards, once considered truly independent, are now widely seen as vanity prizes, doled out to popular stars to get them to appear at the awards ceremony.

Dimple Kapadia's performance at the 1993 Filmfare Awards added fuel to the rumors: When presenting the prize for best actor, she famously walked up to the s tage and made the announcement without even opening the sealed, “secret” envelope. The trophy went to Anil Kapoor (later seen in the U.S. television show “24” and films like “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Mission: Impossible â€" Ghost Protocol”). The actor Aamir Khan, widely considered the favorite that year, publicly resolved to never attend any Indian film awards ceremonies again. He has kept his word.

Bollywood is also inundated with new film awards that have sprung up with the growth of satellite television. The ceremonies entice the industry's biggest stars to appear with either cash or promises of an award, with an eye toward television viewers.

“No one takes film awards seriously in the Indian film industry,” the filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt said in an interview.

“Now there are awards after awards â€" IIFA, Zee, Stardust, Screen, Producers Guild. They're essentially marketing tools designed to boost viewership and ratings,” on the telev ision channels, he said.

Winning a Bollywood film award these days has little to do with how good an actor's performance is, or a filmmaker's skill, some industry veterans say.

“Over the years, the various popular Indian film awards did turn into ‘please-all affairs,' since the presence of stars became all the more important for each of them,” said Rauf Ahmed, former editor of Filmfare magazine, which gives out the award carrying its name.

India's Oscar entry process is also notoriously opaque, which may just add to the intrigue. An independent jury set up by the Film Federation of India chooses the best Indian film of the year for the Oscars' foreign picture category, long before the start of Bollywood's awards season. But just who is on the 11-member jury and how they choose the films remains a mystery, many Bollywood players say.

Neither Mr. Bhatt nor Mr. Johar, among Bollywood's leading producers, is part of the F.F.I., nor do they know anyt hing about the Oscar entry process. “If I had to pitch my own film for an entry, I wouldn't know how to go about it,” Mr. Johar said.

Movies that would seem likely candidates to represent India sometimes are not even considered. The director Shoojit Sircar, whose film “Vicky Donor” was both critically feted and a box-office hit in 2012, said, “I got a rude shock to learn that my producers had not even sent my film for consideration.”

The federation's Oscar picks have often raised eyebrows in the past. At least two of the choices â€" “Indian” in 1996 and “Jeans” in 1998 â€" have bordered on the ridiculous. In 2007, the federation was dragged to the Bombay High Court on charges of favoritism over their entry, Vidhu Vinod Chopra's “Eklavya: The Royal Guard.”

Supran Sen, the secretary general of the federation, was unable to provide much more detail about the organization when contacted. According to the rules, she said, the federation cannot disclose the names of any jury members aside from the chairwoman, Manju Borah, who is a filmmaker from Assam.

“Barfi,” for its part, has already been a box-office success in India, and won critical acclaim for its lead actors - so whether it gets any attention from Oscar judges may not even matter. Domestic box-office receipts are likely to reach 1 billion rupees, or $19 million, a figure considered the gold standard for blockbusters in Bollywood, and unusual for an original (or, in this case, somewhat original) film. Most movies in the “100 crore club” are usually remakes of south Indian films like “Ghajini,” “Singham” or “Bodyguard” or sequels like “Don 2” or “Housefull 2.”

And some in Bollywood predict India's Oscar obsession is about to be turned on its head. “It isn't Indians who need the Oscars, it is the Oscars that need India,” Mr. Bhatt said. “The big boys of Los Angeles have forever been eyeing India's 1.2 billi on fanatic consumers of movies.”

U.S. studios like Warner and 20th Century Fox have set up shop in India to produce films for domestic markets. “Barfi,” in fact, is produced by UTV, which is a Disney-owned company.