With “Most Welcome 2,” claiming to be the most expensive film ever made here, actor-producer-director Ananta Jalil has left the local sex-is-cheaper-than-violence film industry far behind. It is amazing that in just a few years an outsider has been able to create a market for himself in an extremely close knit community. Just like the film producers of the Indian subcontinent, we (Dhallywood) too feel an urgent need to protect our “good culture” from the “bad culture” of Hindi films commonly referred to as Bollywood Masala films. Paradoxically, we have all chosen to play it safe and invest in inferior versions of that same “bad culture,” after all the demand for Bollywood films is undeniably huge. Now Dhallywood has a new threat to reckon with – we need to coin a new word for it – Jollywood.
Proud as I am to have watched every film of Ananta Jalil at the theatres, and proud as I am to have stood in line for hours to get the tickets. There is no shame in admitting the general consensus on his films- that they usually fall in three category: bad, very bad, very very bad. His first film “Khoj: The Search” curled up the hair on the top of my head and straitened it everywhere else. Never before have I seen a person of my gender act like that or talk like that. But he is a fast learner. His best film to date is “Most Welcome” which kicked off this “Jollywood-craze.” It is now easier to find tickets for “Mission Impossible” than it is for “Most Welcome.”
“Most Welcome 2” is a strange sequel as it has no connection with the first film, it is a completely new story. AJ is a police officer acting as the bodyguard of a scientist who had just found the cure for cancer. His love interest is the scientist’s granddaughter. Barsha, AJ’s wife in real life, is the lead again, and it is good to see her in a positive role. She was the femme fatale in the previous film. Like all of his films, this is a “dream film” where AJ lives out his fantasies – he single handedly beats up the bad guys and women drop at his feet, begging for his attention, but being a man of supreme morality he has no time for chicks. When AJ finally shows some attention to Barsha it is all smiley face and happy songs. But the main problem of “Most Welcome 2” is the script, the film seemed to jump from one set piece to another, focusing primarily on the action and forgetting about the story. The action was not impressive at all. The special effects were quite poor too- the animated bullets and the “cartoonish” explosions looked downright silly. How can the audience be impressed if “X-Men” is running in the next theater? Moreover, the image quality kept changing from scene to scene, as if different cameramen worked on the film. But I have to admit I have never heard a Bangla film sound so good. “Most Welcome 2” really sounded like a big action extravaganza.
Clearly, we now have a cultural necessity to watch AJ’s next film. We have to watch it. What happened? How did we come to this stage? Well, first of all, the “golden age” of TV ended with Humayun Ahmed’s dramas and the others are busy making commercials for multinational corporations, and then, there are the local producers focusing on what we have come to call the “garam masala” films. These movies are way behind in terms of catching up with the technological innovations at hand. Television? Alas, poor television. As we witnessed the media’s lip lock with the advertisers, we felt alienated, and gradually “news” took the place of “entertainment.” In comes Ananta Jalil “the messiah.” That is how we have chosen to vent our anger, by embracing the only person thinking about providing public entertainment, he is our superstar, and we love him for what he is. Now the question is: For how long can AJ sustain our curiosity?
AJ is an oxymoron. On one hand, he is an intelligent businessman, a philanthropist, a big shot of the garments industry with 8000 employees working for him; on the other hand, he is the “Super Hero” of exhibitionistic films, and the darling of the social media. Just how big is he? According to Canadian journalist Mark Kelley the owner of a local garments factory with about 2000 workers can earn over TK1.15bn per year, now you can do the math. Does that mean AJ has unlimited resources and can take Bollywood and Hollywood by the horn? I seriously doubt it.
There is a lot of mystery regarding the budget of our films and more so regarding the box office. No one really has any clear idea how big is a big film and how does it compare to other film markets. I did a little research and my guess is “Most Welcome 2” has a budget of about TK80m which is half the amount of a low budget offbeat Hindi film.
Our primary responsibility is to support our families and to educate our children – why is it that the bread and butter for one is poison for another? Is it too much to expect a meaningful film culture with no strings attached? When will we tell the world that we too live, that we too love, that we too cry, when will we tell the world – that we too exist? It is about time, don’t you think?