The audience keeps demanding more rooted stories from Bollywood and in turn, Bollywood keeps pacifying them with stories set in villages, starring big names and backed by larger-than-life production houses.
While major Bollywood figures often claim that South Indian films perform better because of their “rooted storytelling,” one has to ask what exactly do they mean by rooted. The word is thrown around constantly, but does anyone really understand what it implies?
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No, it doesn’t mean what Bollywood thinks it does.
If they truly want to understand what a rooted film looks like, they should watch Alappuzha Gymkhana.
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This Malayalam-language sports comedy, which recently dropped on SonyLIV after a stellar theatrical run, nails every single ingredient that’s missing from most of today’s Hindi films.
For many Bollywood producers, “rooted” has become a code word for a very specific kind of big-budget movie, the loud, hyper-masculine spectacles made famous by the Telugu industry and watered down by the North.
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But Alappuzha Gymkhana shows us what the word really means.
It has no major stars, no grand scale or high stakes, and most surprisingly for a sports movie, it has no villain.
If a film like this were ever pitched in Bollywood, it would likely be laughed out of the room.
Directed by Khalid Rehman, Alappuzha Gymkhana is a hangout movie in the truest sense. The characters drive the plot, not the other way around.
The characters feel real, the premise feels plausible, the problems are relatable, and the film feels genuinely rooted.
When Bollywood tries to make small-scale films these days, they often end up being inauthentic farces. Even the well-made ones like Laapataa Ladies carry a gaze that feels slightly condescending.
Hindi filmmakers can’t even be bothered to shoot in real-life locations anymore, mostly because the people making them have no idea what separates one culture from another.
“Rooted” isn’t just a marketing word used to sell a film or drive up views. It’s something the audience feels when they watch a film. And that’s something Bollywood seriously needs to learn.
