10 July 2009 9:30 AM, PDT | ifc.com | See recent IFC news »
The highest grossing movie in Hindi film history is 2008's "Ghajini," the story of an amnesiac who carries out his revenge against the people who killed his beloved with the help of an elaborate system of Polaroid pictures and tattoos. Sound familiar? "Ghajini" is actually a quasi-remake of Christopher Nolan's "Memento," one of Bollywood's many unauthorized, Indianized editions of Hollywood films, which include everything from "Jagged Edge" to "Powder" to "Fight Club." Being a huge nerd, my first thought when I discovered the American influence on Indian cinema was: what does a Bollywood superhero look like? Turns out the characters themselves closely resemble their American counterparts, though their movies bear some striking differences.
In India, superhero flicks are also very much masala films, which freely combine various (and, for Western audiences, incongruous) genres in the fashion of the blend of spices from which the term comes. Tragedy and comedy »
- Matt Singer
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