Specific genres too, he says, have been underutilised in Kannada cinema. Both Hostel Hudugaru Bekagiddare and Daredevil Mustafa, which emerged as two of the best of 2023, could well be classified as ‘vibe movies’ which feature colleges as backdrops and refreshingly young cast ensembles. Strong doses of humour helped these films stand apart from the rest and if anything, their success does suggest that genres like comedy, romance, coming-of-age, etc. have a great scope of making cinema accessible once again. “The general idea is to keep giving the audience something new, original and out of the box, irrespective of the stardom factor”.
But specificities aside, the thumb rule for success as of 2024 shall be originality both in conception and execution, especially when it is about winning back the confidence/faith of the audience. And faith, indeed, is the operative word here. “There was a big backlash in the 1990s against remake films being made in Kannada,” says popular film writer S. Shyam Prasad. “The next 10-15 years produced hits out of these remakes and the industry was happy. What it didn’t recognise though is that the audience was losing faith because of no originality.”
Roopa Rao concurs by saying that stories rooted in a specific place and time always have the commercial value that a filmmaker looks for. “A bona fide mass film of recent times I liked is Pushpa: The Rise. There’s some authenticity to it, the characters are really rooted,” she says, adding that the very definition of a rooted story doesn’t mean it demands a rural or non-urban setting. “Even a film set in Bengaluru could be rooted if it has an engaging narrative. Characters in cities too have personal struggles — a film like Ganeshana Maduve is a great example. It is set almost entirely between a small set of characters and within the confines of a middle-class ‘Vatara’ housing complex in Bengaluru. It’s been 30 years since I first watched it and I still can’t forget the film.”