Conflict as masala: When films feed lightweight Indian nationalism to the masses

Once upon a time there was a Hollywood film director named John Ford who wisecracked, "Whenever in doubt, I make a Western." Since Ford directed a phenomenal 150 pictures, both silent and talkie, it is no surprise that the horse opera became the staple diet of the American film audience. And once the film industry migrated from cloudy New York to sunny California, its horses could easily gallop through cacti-speckled photogenic deserts, its guns could roar along the Mesa Valley, and its baddies could bite the colourful red dust. Then the Americans fought the first and second world wars on foreign soil, on the winning side, so horse operas were soon and easily enough supplemented by the other obvious addition to the Hollywood stable – the war movie. It was the same stew, only the garnishing was different. And Ford's wisecrack holds good even today, when we see a celebrated cult director like Terence Malik return to filmmaking after 18 years, with the war movie The Thin Red Line.

War movies and horse operas, cowboys and Red Indians, soldier against soldier, man against man. This is the right stuff for drama, because drama is conflict, and what better conflict than war, always so readily available? Heroes are created easily, myth built simplistically, life shown to be larger than life. Though they had witnessed the horrors of war at their own doorstep, the Europeans took a lesson from the American film industry in their own productions. The Soviet and East bloc countries produced war movies using almost the same recipe as Hollywood's. War movies became an important product in the worldwide film market.