COMPARE the dream of progress with the path progress. It’s a constant conflict between idealism and greed. Money vs. Value. Profit vs. Morals. Grab-Grab-Grab vs. Ethics. Myopic vs. Visionary. Good vs. Bad. Beautiful vs. Ugly.
My economics professor might have sounded like a bitter and typical socialist when he said that while teaching us about the 1992 policies but he was actually damned right in some sense. In the context of the cinema, I’ve got to add one more conflict to his long list.
Naked vs. Fully Clothed
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May God help us!
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Creative Cinema- Facts and Fiction
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I’ve read extraordinarily long articles criticising Bollywood for its stereotypicality. A large chunk of our movies belong to a certain mould. The plots, the characters and the execution of these movies follow a very easily perceptible pattern. The only’differentiation’ these movies offer lies in the glamor quotient in its star cast. It’s only a battle between Shah Rukh and Abhishek, or between Priety and Rani. Beyond that, there is little difference in the general approach of the movie. This state of our industry, alone, responsible for our movies to have remained childish ventures before most Western movies. We held Rakesh Roshan upon our heads for his Special Effects in KMG. But do you even dare compare those special effects with the likes of Spielsberg? Our cinema revolves far too rigidly around formulae.
Who is to blame?
I took a lot of beating from people when I made this point before. But I will make it again. WE, the CINEGOERS are responsible for this. The fact is that’creative cinema’ does not prosper in our country, money-wise. An encouraging appraisal in newspapers and praise here or there by others in the industry does not qualify as success. Money-wise, sales volume-wise, creative cinema or’experimental cinema’ is a choking, gurgling industry. Why? Because the cinegoer is never prepared to be at the receiving end.
People seldom sit for a movie with an open mind, expecting something new and fresh to hit their heads. They sit down, their heads shut and their brains completely deactivated, waiting for a standard composition of’entertainment’ to be showered over them. How do you expect anything but formula to succeed?
And don’t tell me this trend has been changing. Just one’Black’ does not mark a change. How much more did Murder sell than Black! How much more did Chocolate sell than Iqbal? Wasn’t’Murder’ another typical sleaze-show-formula? Wasn’t’Chocolate’ another movie stuck in the conman formula?
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Women & The Cine-goer
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Anyone who says that the new cinegoer is sensitive towards women’s issues or allows them freedom of expression is being the greatest fool of our times. Freedom of expression does not mean being inadequately clad and dancing to a vigorous rhythtm while commodifying the woman entirely. Welcome to the cine-age of’sex sells’. Take a look over the past few years and you’ll know exactly what I mean. The youth today speaks more of Mallika Sherawat and Tanushree Datta than Priety Zinta.
The girl who wears less, sells more. Is this a cinegoer’s attitude? I want to know why they’re any different from patrons of prostitution and whore-houses!
Brave and bold cinema does not mean naked women. Are we Indians really so perverted?
Do you want to know what is brave cinema? Consider’Dhoop’. Consider’Saransh’. Consider’Rang De Basanti’. Not’Murder’. Not’Julie’. Not’Zeher’.
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Hypocrycy and the Cinegoer
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They criticize Sherawat for being nothing but a cine-stripper. They scoff neha Dhupia for being a talent-less’bare-it-all’. They decry the generation of’will dare to bear’ starlets whose quick claim to fame is the ease with which they part with their wardrobe. They laugh-off formula-movies, bad camera work(oh look at Farah Khan’s’masterpiece’ called Main Hoon Na) and they call our general lack of technical knowhow our greatest handicap.
But what sells?
The nude babe dancing with a nude lad. The shoddy piece of action work. The stupid formula.
There is little consistency.
It is easy to speak and say we need to change. What isn’t easy is initiating the change. What isn’t easy is to realize that if, for God’s sake, something is to change, it has to begin at YOU. But nope! You aren’t going to learn.! You say one and do another.!
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In an Abrupt Conclusion
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They keep saying that the face of the cine-goer is changing. Does it mean being ready to go through a song-less movie? Does it mean not puking when a babe takes her clothes off and pretends to make love to a guy(with lack of any grace) in the name of’portraying the most intimate manifestations of human emotions’?
It doesn’t.
It means being such a very itchy and irritating viewer of cinema that every time a guy wants to make a movie, he has to look for something fresh and new!
Ha!
You aren’t going to change.
- And I know you’re going to take offense coz I adressed you all through the review. Don’t think twice before taking offense. I wanted it to be that way.-