Blockbuster Effects

A big hello to everyone!

I am hoping most of my folks in India and also in USA/Canada are having a fabulous time holidaying for Christmas and New year. It comes as a welcome break to most people whom I know and talk to on a daily basis. I am returning to blogging after a long break and perhaps its time I pen some views about today's entertainment.

For most South Indians, the weekends are a perfect time to catch up with the tinsel world. We sure do, although with not so content filled hearts, we still want to end up at the huge 70mm screens surrounded by 4 walls. The host in the form of a 70 mm screen may not be the perfect thing to watch, but that is all what we get to entertain our work filled souls for 5 days in a week. I am trying to drive home a point, much to my dismay, that what we want to watch is not what we get in the movie halls.

a. A pointless script in the first place
b. utter senseless filmography,
c. sleaze show coupled with some erratic dances or shall I put it as "erotic" ( I may be offending a fraternity of professionals, but I have a point to make )
d. a director who is not necessarily a creative fanatic, but he is merely here to lead a group of egoistic actors who want to alter the script, no end, to suit their image. On the whole the directors' mission, immaterial of whether the cinema is a hit or no, is totally unaccomplished.
e. Some vulgar comedy, pointless
f. you have a whole lot of people running around trees, only trying to convey their romantic emotions
g. There is a villain, whose only mission is to get the better half of the protagonist. He/she exhibits a lot of perpetual possessiveness.
h. There is a family melodrama

In all this, we are totally missing the protagonists' mission or objective. We only know about it, at the end of the movie, when it has a happy ending. Indian cinema only has a happy ending. Gone or the days, when there is a reality which is portrayed on screen. That is perceived to be the story's objective.

When you club points, "a" through "g", you have a story and you show it to 1 billion people in this country and what counts is how much we have duped the originality and how many fools the director-producer combination has created in this whole process.

I am trying to tell that Indian cinema (in some cases, the world cinema) is on the decline. There are over 1000s of movies made in India every year (may be higher up of 10000) none having a real message to the society. We are being made scapegoats out of watching those pointless movies, dances and the skin show. Mind you there have been great producers and directors in the past who have given us the privilege to watch some classics and still create the urge to watch them over and over again. Now, from a point of evolution, we are moving towards the point of dissolution. We have evolved in cinema, not with the story lines or cinematography, but we have moved ahead of time with the amount of graphics on screen, the huge and expansive sets that make up a scene, the costumes (phew, in some movies the costumes are missing, not much spent over there). Do we really need it?

Most of the times, I want to go back to those yesteryear classics that bring in a sense of relief to our stress filled souls. For example, I was watching these two movies, WHERE EAGLES DARE and THE GREAT ESCAPE. These two movies belonged to the same writer, Alistair MacLean and they have relatively a very simple plot to unearth, very simple screenplay, minimum dialogs, in some scenes, there is only a stare, yet they have been very powerful to make the audience stay on the edge of the seats. The background score as well is very belonging to the scene being enacted. A very simple plot, simplistic dialogs, crafted cinematography and ACTORS have created some classics and you remember it even today and probably for as long as the society can embrace them.

Indian cinema could learn a ton of lessons from these examples. We have learnt those lessons and how did we implement them:

a. We have so much emotion that has been created by actors
b. we have multiplied the climax in movies by three fold
c. we have multiple twists and turns
d. we have lost the whole essence of comedy by replacing it with vulgarity
e. we are drawing larger audiences and making money by virtue of the skin show
Mind you, that the story has to draw the crowds to the movie hall and not, essentially not the cleavage show!

Cinema is all about, TELLING A STORY. Its a total art and about dedication that your team can bring in to narrate the story, and the more you make it simpler, the more chances it has to stay in the memories of people.

What we need today are movies that make more sense. I am sure every director and producer have tried countless permutations and combination of love stories in India. Little do people realize that great blockbusters are those stories which remained closer to the sense of reality. Even in Hollywood (from where we assume to getting inspired) FICTION is totally not the WINNER.

Media in today's world has a very powerful social responsibility. The media is in here to fill the gaps in the society and to create an ecosystem which will only boost societal responsibilities, responsibilities towards each other. But today's media is another ENTERTAINMENT tool. Just as much drama we find in a daily soap or a movie, there is enough drama written in today's newspapers. So the film fraternity and the movie world are virtually in the same business.. and that is to entertain people. This should change with immediate effect. As Raghu says, the objective of media is to draw opinions from people and act like a mirror to create a better accommodating society. I hope this is the case in the future.

On the same note, I hope all of us get to watch better movies, movies with a message and movies with an objective oriented approach to reforming society. Not all movies may be like that, but reformation is what we need. The quality of viewership also needs to change. We are of the same quality as our previous generations.

Hopefully some director notices this script and makes full use of his potential to make movies.

Have a FABULOUS NEW YEAR AHEAD!

Cheers!
Rajesh