Karnataka government has decided to cap movie ticket prices to bring people back to the theatres. Is a forced discount enough?
Srikar Raghavan
Mar 14, 2025 06:59 IST First published on: Mar 14, 2025 at 06:59 IST
The filmmaker Anurag Kashyap has publicly voiced his desire to move out of Mumbai in the foreseeable future, citing disillusionment with an increasingly uncreative and stifling atmosphere in Bollywood. In a recent interview, he expressed his disgust for the corrosive financialisation of the industry and his great admiration for contemporary Malayalam cinema, and recalled his encounter with two Kannada films from the late 1990s by the maverick director Upendra — A and Om — that proved formative to Kashyap’s evolving sensibilities. This turn towards the South comes at a critical moment for Indian cinema in general, a time when indie filmmaking must inevitably contend with the profit/propaganda gauntlet. All this while the South itself seems to be pushing back with a renewed emphasis on regional languages in response to the nationalist push for Hindi.
In the recent Karnataka state budget, CM Siddaramaiah announced a new swathe of allocations to vitalise Kannada cinema — a film city in Mysuru, new multiplexes, preservation of digitised Kannada films — while also capping multiplex ticket prices at Rs 200, similar to norms in Tamil Nadu. The government also organised a subsidised book sale at Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru recently — mostly promoting Kannada publications — inspired by a similar event in Kerala. Yet, these seem to be springing precisely from the worry (and this is a longstanding one) that the vitality of the Kannada world has fallen short of emulating the successes of these very neighbours. In this regard, it might be worthwhile to note that while the budget spoke about launching a new OTT platform for Kannada movies, there has been little acknowledgement of the abysmal quality of mainstream Kannada television and the dire need for creative upheaval within its ranks. If these new platforms end up merely absorbing (or even amplifying) the conservative and moribund forces currently dictating the television space, without providing adequate encouragement for exciting young voices to take over, the results are not likely to be very inspiring.
Story continues below this ad
There is also an anxiety in the Kannada cine-verse with regard to poor viewership for unconventional films that break out of existing templates. Just this Sunday, I went to watch the brilliant new Kannada film Mithya at a multiplex in Manipal; the ticket cost only Rs 150, but more than half the hall was nevertheless empty. While price caps can be helpful to a certain degree, there is a deeper crisis flummoxing Sandalwood — namely the lack of a serious and discerning audience — that is only being skirted around. Like the moving story of Mithya — an orphaned boy who must come to terms with a traumatic new world bereft of a rooted past — Kannada cinema seems to be encountering a crucial impasse, and is certainly in need of rehabilitation measures. Yet, one wonders if a top-down push via “public-private partnerships”, embracing the homogenising tendencies of American-style neoliberalism, is the best way to provide these necessary fillips. What of the professional theatre troupes and non-urban drama traditions (from which Kannada cinema emerged in the 20th century) that remain bereft of these allocations? Is cinema to be imagined as a self-contained sphere, disconnected from the larger ecosystem from which it stands to gain so much inspiration? What about the task of introducing cinematic exposure into primary schooling, which continues to cling to a dull, overtly text-based approach? Can we afford to pretend that this scholastic vacuum is not directly connected with the broader lack of cine-appreciation? Without a genuine decentralisation of resources and funds, the proposed direction runs the risk of perpetuating dubious establishment interests and prevailing cultural norms. To be sure, the current budget has increased its education allocation by Rs 864 crore compared to last year, which will boost school infrastructure and fill up teaching posts. Yet, there seems to be no accompanying vision that will usher in transformative public education reforms — we must again be satisfied with the augmentation of an outmoded system that will continue to function as a disciplinary space rather than one that actively encourages children to be imaginative, creative, and rebellious.
This perpetuation of the status quo is especially frustrating when one sees the pace at which the world is otherwise being remade. Just a few days ago, Sterling Theatre, an iconic memory from my adolescence in Mysuru, was finally demolished after years of disuse, joining the ranks of several other such landmarks over the last few years. What becomes of these once-glorious ruins? They are mostly converted into malls, shopping complexes, apartments, convention centres, or other such lucrative financial capital, subsumed into a multinational world of rentier capitalism, whose apex is the multiplex — a sanitised arena where suave crowds may stream in, indulge in generous spending, and maybe even watch a film, standing up coolly for the obligatory national anthem that will invariably greet you, after you’ve paid five per cent extra tax should you happen to prefer sugary popcorn.
Srikar is the author of Rama, Bhima, Soma: Cultural Investigations into Modern Karnataka
