Having analysed all the possible reasons why several Marathi movies which were critically acclaimed and appreciated by one and all couldn’t pass the OTT test, more or less, it was gathered that everything boils down to money.
OTT is a cost incurred business that requires money for maintenance and hence the platform is open to any content that attracts the audience. Once the audience gives a tremendous response in the form of numbers, all OTT gates automatically open up.
Having spoken to experts, The Perfect voice also tried to engage in conversations with Marathi and non-Marathi viewers. There were mixed thoughts. While close to 100 viewers who gave mixed responses cannot be enough to draw a conclusion, the exercise definitely shed some light on what could possibly be the inclination of the audience.
While some non-Marathi speaking viewers expressed passionately about Marathi cinema and the depth it involved, some even had watched offbeat realistic films like Kaasav, Tingya, and the likes which many haven’t even heard of. While many others highlighted the difference between Classical and popular genres. Some films have quality and can appeal to just a small section of the society, while many others who tune in to OTT for entertainment may find such films too heavy to digest. A few pointed out that Marathi content lacks the masala magic which is a mixture of sex, violence and abusive language that is important to attract the audience and this factor reduces the probability of the Marathi content attracting an audience unlike other regional content or Bollywood content. Then a question arises, what about a film like Sairat? Sairat is a difficult love story that draws a very harsh realistic picture of the repercussions of a marriage that’s not acceptable to the society for various complex reasons.
The film has masala, but the presentation is subtle. Just the way Amaltaash serenely portrays complexities of relationships, romance, tragedy, with brilliant music being the cherry on the top. What was the secret behind Sairat’s success? The answer lies in aggressive marketing. Zee left no stone unturned in promoting the film on all platforms. “Aggressive marketing is what worked for Sairat. Aggressive promotion is the only key to success in this industry,” said popular actor Uday Tikekar. To some extent this logic is believable as history has an example of late director Shyam Benegal who made films like Hari Bhari a film that talks about importance of birth control as early as in 1070’s, is not even heard of and Zubeida that has come to be known as the finest piece made by Shyam Benegal who dealt with much more brilliant ideas and topics in a series of films right from the 1970’s like Ankur, Manthan, Nishant, Hari Bhari, Sooraj Ka Satwa Ghoda, Mammo and Sardari Beghum. What changed during Zubeida? Glamour stepped in along with Karishma Kapoor, A R Rahman and the financially strong promoters. Till Zubeida, Vanraj Bhatia did music for all Benegal movies. How many of us have heard of him? Benegal made a commercially right decision and hit a masterstroke after parting ways with the realistic and classical world in 1996, when he worked on Sardari Beghum.
Another important point was highlighted by Prakash Kunte, the director of popular Marathi movies like Coffee Aani Barach Kahi and Cycle who said, “Dialectic diversity which changes after every few hundred kilometers, makes our (Marathi content creators) case more difficult. Besides, Marathi as a language makes it unfit for web or OTT purely because of thin audience size. Secondly, in Hindi there's a separate set of actors working in the Web shows and films. While Marathi actors work in all media including theatre. This is also a factor.”
Sources in the industry also highlighted that caste is another aspect. A lot of content that is created by the upper caste (Brahmins) revolves around their own purist lifestyle which doesn’t resonate with the entire Maharashtra which is not merely confined to Brahmans.
While the future of Marathi content is not so grim as it sounds to be, the difference between classical and popular genres will always be there. Those who cater to the right target audience, make content that people popularly like and spend the right amount of money in making people aware of their creativity will make it through OTT platforms. While those who follow the route of the French neo-realist concept of filmmaking that was adopted by Satyajit Ray, will make it to film festivals, awards, donations and Cinema academics but probably will fail the OTT test.
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