he unapologetic use of blood and gore seems to have become the mainstay of Bollywood releases this year. The year began with Agneepath’s bloodbath. The brouhaha surrounding the excessive violence in the movie quickly died down in the wake of the movie’s success at the box office. Six months into 2012, several Hindi films have repeated the act of violence successfully — Jannat 2, Rowdy Rathore, Ishaqzaade, Kahaani, Shanghai and Gangs Of Wasseypur. Agneepath director Karan Malhotra feels that “illogical maar-dhaad is unacceptable. Family audiences now accept films with violence if presented as entertainment”. While entertaining violence has been the mainstay of many movies this year, Ishaqzaade director Habib Faisal explains that violence is not always physical in its manifestation, “In Kahaani, the violence is more emotional. Sometimes filmmakers choose to glamourise violence and sometimes, heroism is also defined by violence. Like in my film, the heroism of the boy and the girl lies in the violent act of them taking their own lives.” In effect, Faisal uses violence to give an anti-violent message. This ballad of blood has been most pronounced in Dibakar Banerjee’s Shanghai and Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs Of Wasseypur. When Dibakar claimed that Shanghai’s “probably the most violent film” he’s ever done, he wasn’t being hyperbolic. At the time of the movie’s release, he’d said, “By violent I do not mean people being killed or decomposed bodies. With violence, I mean emotional violence,” reiterating the point about the many forms of violence. GoW, with its violent characters, managed to combine commercial success with gore and bloodshed. Jannat 2 producer Mahesh Bhatt says violence works very well with single screens, “In the overseas market and in multiplexes, violence may not sell as well as it does with single screens. Movies which show violence work quite well with single screens and make a lot of money there. However, there is no getting away from the fact that the Indian audience is now willing to witness violence on screen, but with not so much blood, and filmmakers have realised that too.” Given the fact that violence-ridden films seem to be making more money at the box office this year than most other films, it certainly seems to be a good time to experiment with the genre.
