Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema

With its sudden explosions into song-and-dance sequences, half-time intermissions, and heavy traces of censorship, Indian cinema can be identified as a ‘cinema of interruptions’. To the uninitiated viewer, this unfamiliar tendency towards digression may appear random and superfluous. Yet, this book argues that such devices assist in the construction of a distinct visual and narrative time-space. In the hands of imaginative directors, the conventions of Indian cinema become opportunities for narrative play and personal expression in films such as Sholay (1975), Nayakan (1987), Parinda (1989), Hathyar (1981), and Hey Ram (1999). Cinema of Interruptions places commercial Indian film within a global system of popular cinemas, but also points out its engagement with the dominant genre principles implemented by western film. By focusing on the action-genre work of leading contemporary directors J.P. Dutta, Mani Ratnam and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, a brazen national style is shown to interact with international genre films to produce a hybrid form that reworks the gangster film, the western, and the ‘avenging woman’ genre. In presenting a fresh framework for understanding popular Indian cinema, Gopalan has made an important new contribution to film genre studies. Not only will her book be of interest to the cinephile and students of film studies, but will appeal to the general reader as well.