Films of Pakistan and India wage war by celluloid

for decades, Indian and Pakistani movie audiences have demanded basically one kind of film: sweet, song-and-dance tales of star-crossed lovers who somehow live happily ever after.

But there has been a noticeably darker movie formula in recent years, and two of the biggest films in each country today speak volumes about how these South Asian neighbors see each other.

Consider the current Indian blockbuster "Gadar: Ek Prem Katha" (literally, "Commotion: a Love Story"). It's a Romeo-and-Juliet tale of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl who fall in love in India during the bloody Partition period of 1947, a time when Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan were separated by the stroke of a British pen. The Muslim girl travels to Pakistan to visit her parents, and her Sikh husband follows her there and fights off the Pakistani Army to get her back.

In Pakistan, meanwhile, the latest hit is "Tere Pyar Main" ("Your Love is Mine"). In its plot, set in modern times, a Muslim boy falls for a Sikh girl who is visiting Lahore. He follows her back to India, but is branded a Pakistani spy and must fight off the entire Indian Army to bring his girl back to Pakistan.

Two films don't make a trend, of course, especially if they are flops. But films that make the amount of money these two have - Gadar could become the top-grossing Indian film of all time - can be indicators of public attitudes on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border.

Some film critics say audiences in both India and Pakistan are simply hungry for something more meaningful than the usual syrupy romance. Others say filmgoers are seeking a kind of catharsis, particularly at a time when the decade-long Muslim separatist movement in Kashmir has killed 34,000 and brought India and Pakistan repeatedly to the brink of war. But whatever the reasons, film buffs from Karachi to Calcutta are likely to see many more war films in coming months.

"Patriotism was always there in the movies, but even 15 years ago, you could not name Pakistan as the enemy. It was always the neighboring country that was the one causing trouble," says Shubhra Gupta, a film critic for the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi.

Censorship rules have loosened over the years, allowing many Indian films to specifically name Pakistan as an instigator. But the driving force for the current spate of political movies is the changing public mood, says Ms. Gupta.

"People have grown away from these bubble-gum romances that were dreamed up by some airhead," she says. "What do the people of India see in everyday life? They fight wars, they don't have enough to eat. So the mainstream movie industry is being forced to look into more meaningful subjects."

Such meaningful movie subjects can spark occasional communal unrest, including riots inside and outside of cinema halls. But filmmakers in the Pakistani cultural capital of Lahore argue that their movies simply provide what people have always wanted: entertainment.

It is in Lahore, jokingly called "Lollywood," where the virulently patriotic film "Tere Pyar Main" was produced. While the 200 million rupee ($3,123,000) Pakistani film industry is dwarfed by the 2 billion rupee ($42,500,000) Indian film industry, Lollywood still has a powerful effect on Pakistani society, particularly on the working-class folks who fill this country's run-down cinema halls.

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