Every time a movie like Kahaani, Lagaan, Ekalavya or Guzarish releases, the Indian movie critics start having sleepless nights, gastritis, acidity, indigestion and all sorts of un-comforting ailments. Now this is turn of Barfi.
Reason?
The reason is that they have to scan each and every second of these movies and have to dig their minds as hard as they can to find out even 1 second resemblance with any foreign language movie! They have such a monumental task before them to complete. How can they rest? So, what if they find even 2 seconds of resemblance with some Hungarian stage play or Italian documentary, they have to establish the fact that everything good that happens in Indian movies are copied from Western movies.
I often hear people saying "XYZ is such a great movie. They must have copied it from some English movie". Why someone has to copy something from English movie to make something good in India? I can't believe the fact that all people from one country are better than another country in terms of creativity or intellect. I believe just like good and bad people are there in every country, every culture, intelligent and dull people are also there in every country and every culture.
But having said that, this is also true that English and foreign language movies have great influence on the Indian movie and television. If we keep the blame game aside for a moment, then may be this is the time when we should ask the question "why so". In my understanding, this is because America started developing movies and television far before anyone in the world started. So, that makes them the pioneer in this field. In that case, is it but not natural that everyone in the world will look upto them in this field? If someone wants to even study about films, they have to rely on the huge collection of movies what America has been producing for all these years. Can you blame a student for being influenced by his professor?
But what is more important is that what is being copied and how it is used. For example, if someone has created a full story and has narrated the story in his own original cinematic language, but while telling the story, he has used one sequence whose core idea might be similar to some other existing sequence of a Foreign language movie but he has completely developed the idea in the newly woven environment. Also, the sequence doesn’t bear much impact on the original storyline but on the contrary, can be edited also. In this situation, will you discard the director’s effort to create the entire movie in his own right, or will you blame the director of plagiarism for using that trivial sequence? I find Barfi such a movie and blaming Anurag Basu of doing “copy-paste job” would be a crime to his entire effort of making such a poetic movie.
On the other hand, there are other directors in our country, who develop the entire story of the movie combining 3-4 English movies. They not only copy and use the sequences from English movies, but they don’t hesitate to show Indian characters following American culture – For example, they show Indian (the name suggest them to be Hindu) people getting married in churches wearing white gowns. They also shoot the movies in foreign locations to easily portray the copied stories and copied sequences. Directors like Sajid Khan, Kunal Kohli, Kabir Khan, Farah Khan, Karan Johar, Shirish Kunder, Aditya Chopra are few typical examples of such directors. But unfortunately, the great knowledgeable critics of India never say a word against these directors and their movies. They will never say how much copy-paste job they have done. Why so? Is it because of the fact that all these critics are actually paid employees to these directors, producers and these banners?
I don’t have any trust or belief on these so-called critics. I detest them. I loathe their boot-licking nature. I never read any review done by any Indian critic. I am sorry but over the years I have found them the most corrupt people of our country. They misuse their power of pen and misguide people by their employer-guided goal.
So, I will never blame Barfi of plagiarism. Instead, I’ll be grateful to Anurag Basu to dare to create such a masterpiece for the most undeserving and ungrateful audience of India.
