Filmmaker Shakun Batra reflected on Indian romances and why they fail to connect with the younger generation in recent times. While international shows such as Off Campus and Sterling Point have found a loyal fan base among Indian youth, Bollywood romances somehow still fail to strike a chord.
Shakun Batra, who recently showed a complex romance between two people in their 20s in Lust Stories 3, told HT City, “I believe that you can’t put yourself into somebody else’s head and think about how they will look at it. If I have a point to say, I’ll put it out, and if I have done my job right, if not today, in a year or two, they will understand and accept it, and that’s what happened to me when I grew up watching movies.”
The director continued, “As directors and storytellers, what you’re doing is putting your most authentic self out, and not figuring out what that person needs to watch. If you’re doing it that way, then you are doing a work-for-hire kind of thing, where you feel that I need to make this person feel good,” explaining why he cannot work like that.
Shakun added, “I need to portray what I am feeling and what I need to express and hope that I’ve done a job of simplifying it enough that somebody else can also receive it.”
Talking about why he feels filmmakers are failing to connect with the younger generation, Shakun believes that directors need to make something from what they feel. “I’ve been in many of those meetings where they’re like, ‘Ye chal raha hai (this is working).’ But mere se wo nahin ho raha hai (but I cannot do it), and that’s why I’ve had enough breaks in my career. If somebody’s flipping up and down and that’s working, I can’t do it. I’ll just do it so bad, and why put myself through it?” he said.
The filmmaker also shared that Bollywood romance shown over the years is also a reason behind this disconnect. “You meet this person who is your soulmate, and then life is amazing, but it never is,” he said, adding that romance shown in Bollywood films is still far from reality, and that is why it fails to connect with audiences, especially with the younger generation.
