Movies

It all started when Eadweard Muybridge under the sponsorship of Leland Stanford successfully filmed a horse named “Sallie Gardner”. That was nineteenth century and the year was 1878. The entertainment industry was on the cusp between live entertainment and recorded entertainment. In retrospect, one realizes that this minuscule event changed the course of drama centric entertainment.

Today, movies are the most congenial and preferred source of entertainment. I have got many friends who get cerebral paralysis, when are asked to conjecture anything except celluloid for entertainment. I often doubt that, perhaps, they are not cognitively evolved to think in any other direction. Their stereotypical, run of the mill idea of fun is certainly nauseating, but, more than that, it is thought provoking! It perhaps, manifests the alarming penetration of movies in our routine life.

Since our generation is abounding filmy freaks, the entertainment industry is leaving no stone unturned to make the most of this development by providing endless procurement of money making objects, euphemistically called as movies. The upsetting part of the story is that all kind of feature films cost the same to the end consumer. With bad movies significantly outnumbering the good movies, the end result is a pool of cinema epitomizing a lethal conundrum.

But, unfortunately this confusion is not palpable to many of us. We are quite pleased with our disparaging skills and deem ourselves intelligent enough to steer us out of this pool of anarchy. The truth is that, however, most of the times we fall for these ruses and end up with disappointments.

But, look at the brighter side! This clearly proves that we are a sanguine race. Even after watching some thousand self proclaimed comedies with few imbecile characters repeating the same godforsaken idiocies, our families fall for these cons masqueraded as family movies. Just some smart repackaging is enough to revitalize their enthusiasm and provoke them to go for the new bait.

Our love buds watch every damn love story hoping to learn tricks and trades of this arena.

The last trick learnt from the last movie fell flat on its face. The last movie was bullshit, the director knew nothing, but this movie seems very promising.

The DevDs hope to find the glimpse of their wretched and battered life in the movie. Movie after movie, weeks after week, they keep going to the same hall, same misplaced corner settle, anticipating unearthing the answer of “why she left?”

Oh Dear! If you take 13 movies to find one plain answer, any girl will leave you. It is your IQ, poor boy! And not only that girl, even, the director of the movie that, you are watching, knows it.

This is what the true problem is; the consumer doesn’t understand the game of which he is a part. If we think a little hard, we will realize that we were always fighting a lost battle. There is no way, one can figure out whether to watch a movie or not sans watching it. You can take reviews, but like often-said, every individual is different and thus one review doesn’t suit all. You may like a movie which your friend loathes.

Nonetheless, in this despondent and hopeless movie world, I see at least few shafts of light and those are the classics.

Every one of us has watched some cinema which we will remember forever, which left a mark on our heart and brain, and which transformed us. Have you ever wondered, what made that movie extraordinary? Why its impact was so emphatic that, a part of your persona still reflects it?

I presume that it’s the connection of the movie and the viewer.How well it connects and what effect does that connection bring.

If a feature film is able to grip the attention of the viewer for its entire length, then it is a good entertainer but, only if, it can impel you to consider about something that you have never deliberated, or if it can make you feel some emotion in a brighter and stronger manner, or if it can tinker your accepted wisdom and can take it to some unseen planet of thoughts, then the movie actually stands apart and becomes a classic.

If you have seen the recent masterpieces by Indian film industry like Taare Zameen Par and Rang De Basanti, you perhaps will better appreciate, what I am trying to put into words.