Hollywood Bollywood

I was ‘amazed, confused, surprised, perplexed and finally was feeling proud’. It was an amalgamation of feelings when I heard Bollywood song ‘Chaiya Chaiya’ being played in a Hollywood movie ‘Inside Man’. We were a couple of minutes early to the show, and when the show began with AR Rahman song I suddenly couldn’t understand, at first I felt we landed in a wrong theatre, then thought the sound is coming from some where else not a part of movie, it took few seconds for me to realize that a bollywood number is being played during the titles of the movie. Then my head rouse with pride being an Indian.

Spike Lee’s latest smash ‘Inside Man’, starring Danzel Washington is about a New York Bank robbery. There are wide range of anecdotes over the opening and closing tracks of the movie. Some felt that ‘the opening and closing musical tracks immediately attracted the attention of film critics and moviegoers alike because Lee chose an unexpected piece of Bollywood music as a curtain-raiser for his urban thriller’, some critics felt the music gave an ‘energetic edge’ to bank heist thriller, while some other critics felt that the music is totally out of the movie track, and sounded like a African or a middle east folk music which has nothing to do with plot of the movie. What ever it is, it surely is a big achievement to AR Rahman, but this simple down to earth person is not the one who is going to feel complacent, he said all this means that he has to work even harder, it is also a reminder that one must remain humble even more than ever.

While Spike Lee, who works as professor in New York University’s graduate film school, has his own version of story for choosing a bollywood song. He said during a class of musicals one of his students asked him to see some bollywood, with little or rather no knowledge of bollywood Lee asked her to name a film, She immediately said ‘Dil Se’ and gave him a DVD of the movie next day. Lee happened to like the movie and intensely got attracted to the song ‘Chaiya Chaiya’, he then thought he would play the song in his next movie. This shows the power of Rahman’s music and that one could never get away from his beats.

Rahman’s music in Hollywood movies is not new, his songs are featured in 2001 romantic hit ‘Moulin Rouge’, there are half a dozen of his songs in the movie ‘Lord of the rings’, his haunting theme music from the movie ‘Bombay’ is played for almost two minutes in Nicolas Cage starrer ‘Lord of the War’. While the whole song of ‘Chaiya Chaiya’ in the beginning and the end of ‘Inside Man’ is surely a surprise to me. The track at the end of the movie has mixing of rap to the original Sukwinder Singh number. I was singing the song aloud feeling proud for knowing the lyrics. We stayed in the theatre till the song is completely played, I found that others also are not leaving the hall, don’t know whether it is because of the song or because of the titles at the end. I was eagerly waiting for AR Rahman’s name on the screen, but got totally disappointed not finding his name any where.

Cheers to the man who made an international mark and still is simple and down to earth unlike his counterparts Anu Mallik or any other bollywood musician. When we happen to see a Hollywood or any international music or film with similarities with bollywood plot or music we think that our bollywood has pilfered it from Hollywood (even the name bollywood is a copy), but here is the man who made it other way round.