One of the most approachable and enjoyable films about the creative urge that you will see is "Superboys of Malegaon," which is about film enthusiasts obsessing over films and then making one of their own. It’s best not to read too much before watching it because it’s based on things that really happened, which means it takes a few turns that you expect and many more that you don’t (because life is generally not as tidy as fiction).
It is not a work of formal adventure that challenges the conventions of commercial cinema in any way. As directed by Reema Kagti and written by Varun Grover—and set in the waning days of analog technology, circa 1998—it establishes its small-town, movie-obsessed characters and their dreams and challenges in a series of economical gestures, as a much older movie might do, then keeps going in that vein, all the way through to the end.
It covers a wider range of topics and a longer time period than you might have expected, but instead of feeling scattered or unfocused, it ends up feeling like life itself. Even if you don't feel like it, you have to face the challenge that the next sunrise presents. That is the challenge and the trick. Adarsh Gourav, who stars in "The White Tiger" in 2021, plays Nasir, a wedding videographer who is one of two cinema-focused brothers who run a micro-cinema that shows mashups of classic films from film history, such as silent films by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. To put it mildly, Malegaon is a city in the Nashik District of the Maharashtra State in India that is not known as a center for cinema. The brothers' place rarely sells more than a few tickets because the locals want Bollywood spectacles made in Mumbai. A small theater across the street shows current movies and has lines out the door. Nashir responds defensively, "We're the only ones showing Chaplin and Keaton in Malegaon.
" The response was, "Why are we screening these movies?" Did Chaplin's dying mother request that you screen her son's films? Nashir has the brilliant idea of making a low-budget spoof of Bollywood hits like "Sholay" right there in Malegaon and then showing it in the microcinema after the police break up a screening for showing copyrighted films without permission (even though they are not the actual works). This gambit is partly about keeping the doors open but mainly a fulfillment of urges that were already percolating inside locals whose lives revolve around the cinema.
Nashir and his brother, who handprint the theater's posters and other signs, are smart, driven young men. However, they are not writers, so Nashir asks Vineet Singh (Farogh), a local journalist who wants to write a movie, to take care of those responsibilities. The cast and crew assembles itself from there. Some of the sequences are expected but foolproof, so they're welcome, like the montage of auditions for key speaking roles, which has always made people laugh. Other sequences, on the other hand, are unexpected because they show how art must connect with life and all of its mundane daily responsibilities and financial realities. The cinematographer has to pack up his equipment at one point and attend a wedding in the middle of the shoot because the bills won't pay for themselves. Nashir agrees to his producer's plan to include a commercial for a locally produced brand of matches in the film itself—product placement!—when the production needs money halfway through. This angers Farogh, who is right to say that Nashir has compromised the integrity of his vision.
Farogh advises, "So just say you want money." "I'll take some. But don't ruin your image. The fact that no one is completely right or completely wrong even when the arguments get heated and uncomfortably personal, even when they are hurtful, is what makes this scene and many others related to the artistic process and the artists who participate in it fascinating. It is permissible for anyone to make valid arguments that cannot be completely refuted. Farogh is arrogant and rigid, but he is also a good example of a purist mindset that should be cherished and nurtured because there wouldn't be any real art without it. Nashir is a short-sighted and impulsive individual who draws his friends into his dream without considering the cost to them; however, he possesses the kind of drive you need to create new things, whereas the majority of the others do not. Cinema is a popular art form that had its origins in the industrial age and is a part of the larger economic engines that drive society, sometimes for the worse. The most successful filmmakers are able to strike a balance between these forces and achieve that sweet spot between giving the audience what they want and what they didn't know they wanted and keeping everything personal and unique without disappearing down their own bums.
“Superboys of Malegaon” is itself a dramatization of this interplay of agendas and ideas. The first half, in particular, may bring back memories for older viewers of the golden era in the 1990s and early aughts when home video presale money enabled the funding of numerous low- to medium-budget comedy dramas about somewhat regular people scrambling after a dream, such as "The Full Monty," "Tampopo," "Big Night," "Brassed Off," and "Be Kind Rewind" (which would fit beautifully on a double-bill with "Superboys."
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