Let's Watch A Movie With A Real Lead Actress

I watched the Oscars a few days ago. I must say that I liked them, especially because they showed clippings of the movie-making process when the award nominations for the technical and creative categories were announced. They actually showed the designs for the 'Young Victioria' before it got the award for Best Costume Design. The lead characters from the Best Animated Feature nominations even spoke a few lines and they were funny despite not being human.

One thing that I noticed while watching the Oscars was that all the women nominated for Best Actress had the real lead role in their respective movies. Carey Mulligan from An Education played a London schoolgirl, Meryl Streep from Julie &Julia played the famous cook Julia Child, Sandra Bullock (who actually won) played a suburban woman who adopts a black teenager in The Blind Side, Helen Mirren played Leo Tolstoy's wife in The Last Station and Gabourey Sidibe played an abused teenager in Precious. When I say that they had real lead roles, I mean that they were the lead in movies which told the stories of interesting woman. They were not part of the show, they were the show. It is good to know that there still are filmmakers who consider the lives of women worthy of cinematic reflection.

And that brings me to the Indian film industry. Over the past few years, I have noticed a steep decline in the number of lead actresses in our country. Most of the new actresses are former models who just look pretty but I doubt that they would be able to carry a movie on their own shoulders without having a big actor around. Even the characters they potray are bland and one dimensional. Many of them potray young women whose only purpose in life is to live for other people, especially their leading man. The good actresses, who may score a little low on beauty but are more talented than all Bollywood actors put together, are forced to do art films which are beautiful creations that do rounds of film festivals but never make it to multiplexes.

Remember Rani Mukherjee in Black or Karishma Kapoor in Fiza? Where did all the movies about beautiful, strong, independent yet feminine women go? Does this mean that the psyche of most Indians which like to have women in the kitchen or in a beauty pageant has trickled its way into the movie halls and now we are forced to watch women be treated as mere glamour dolls? Why can't we think of women who have brains and several shades to their characters? Are all such women dead, or have we just forgotten to look at women as something different and deeper than what we perceive them to be?

I am going to keep waiting for a good Indian movie about the life of a woman (and no, Priyanka Chopra walking down the ram in Fashion does not count). Meanwhile, here is a movie I suggest you watch. It's called The Runaways and it stars Kristen Stewart (you may know her from Twilight) and Dakota Fanning (who was the little girl in War Of The Worlds). The Runaways were the first all-girl rock band in the 1970s. Their members were mere teenagers when the band reached its height of fame. This fame, although notoriously short-lived, opened the doors for many girl singers, and the fact that you see Madonna and Britney Spears or even Sunidhi Chauhan on TV today is thanks to this band. Even though these girls were controversial and their life included scandals like drug addiction, the very fact that they chose to assert themselves through their music and played the electric guitar and the drums instead of softer instruments like the piano is interesting. These were women who refused to conform and lived an unconventional life. They thought like no man could. They were also the singers of a song called 'Cherry Bomb' which I think is the mother of all teen anthems.

Below is a trailer of The Runaways and a video of the song 'Cherry Bomb'.






And by the way, I am pretty sure that there are a lot of wonderful, inspiring women in India whose lives could be the subject of movies. We did give the world a great movie called Mother India, didn't we? Khoon Bhari Maang was a Bollywood movie, right? This means that even Bollywood can make dazzling movies about women. Until such a movie comes, enjoy this video from Mother India: