Anurag Kashyap, Director, Producer, Actor – in conversation with Baradwaj Rangan, Film Critic, on the second day of The Hindu Huddle 2025, in Bengaluru on May 10, 2025.
| Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K

Ace filmmaker Anurag Kashyap on Saturday (May 10) criticised the recent trend in Tamil cinema where lyrics and compositions of film songs are anglicised, a criticism many netizens are claiming was aimed at composers like Anirudh Ravichander. The filmmaker said this while criticising the trend of making pan-Indian movies during a session at The Huddle by The Hindu.

Speaking to acclaimed film critic Baradwaj Rangan, Anurag said, “A recent phenomenon is that Tamil has also started trying to compete with Telugu Pan-India films, because suddenly Tamil songs are in English. I’m like, why? Suddenly, they’re all (sounding) like some foreign rock band, singing in English — like ‘I’m coming for you. I’m gunning for you.’ This is not a Tamil song. Tamil songs used to be like what we used to borrow in Hindi, like from Ilaiyaraaja and everybody, but now Tamil songs don’t make sense to me.”

Speculations that Anurag was indirectly calling out Anirudh aren’t without reason. The music composer, who has become a staple for big-star vehicles, has composed many songs with either anglicised lyrics — like ‘Ordinary Person’ and ‘I’m Scared’ from Leo or ‘Once Upon A Time’ in Vikram — or have scores in the same vein as Western pop music.

Interestingly, in a recent interview with journalist Sudhir Srinivasan, Anirudh had expressed his admiration for Western rock bands and said that some songs, like ‘Bloody Sweet’ from Leo, arise from the influence of vintage rock music on the filmmakers and composers.

Anurag’s criticism of pan-Indian movies

It is to be noted that Anurag cited the trend as an example of filmmakers chasing a formula to make “that elusive Rs. 1000-crore” pan-Indian movie. “’Pan-India’, in my opinion, is a massive scam,” he said.

The filmmaker was elucidating how only 1% of films that attempt to become a pan-Indian success end up working at the box office, and the irony in how that 1% in turn starts a new sub-trend of pan-Indian movies. The filmmaker cited how Stree — a blockbuster that had ‘zero-expectations’ riding on it — started a cycle of horror-comedies in Hindi cinema. “Uri: The Surgical Strike became a success, and everyone started doing nationalistic films. Post Baahubali, everybody wanted to do these big movies with Prabhas or somebody else. KGF became a success, and everyone wants to emulate that. That’s where the decline of storytelling begins,” he noted.

All that such filmmakers have cited in catering to modern film-goers, like a decline in attention span of the audiences, are “logic they give themselves,” he stressed. “The audiences have a low attention span, and so, there has to be an item every two minutes…you can’t write a film like that.”

Criticising Bollywood for its formulaic approach to filmmaking, Anurag praised southern Indian films for their rooted storytelling. “The advantage of regional languages is that they know they are catering to people who speak and understand the language and its culture. A person from a rural village can also tell their story and be a filmmaker, and a lot of that is happening in regional languages,” said Anurag.