Yesterday, on Sunday, I saw altogether eight movies, 20-22 hours of varied emotions. Laughing, crying, empathizing and sometimes, self-loathing - I moved from one movie to another. I chose to live the lives of those fictional characters on silver screen rather than socializing and having a life of my own. This whole brain numbing experience taught me something. The black hole of a want of company or having a good time can never be filled with movies. This further got me to wondering the purpose of people collectively going to cinema houses to watch movies. I sincerely think now it goes way deeper than just having a good time together and buying over priced pop-corn, Samosas and water bottles.
I feel it’s about relating with the movie, connecting with the group of people, with friends, family and people in the theatre in general. As the movie proceeds and you move along the trip, you are bound to have collective emotions along with your friends / family. For E.g., take this new movie “Tashan.” As the movie neared its end, everybody in the theatre were using cuss words for the producers, directors, writers and anything and everything related to the movie. A thorough national integration of thought processes, resulting in a combined outburst of anger and rage cutting across age, caste, creed, sex and species. ‘Tashan’ indeed, the movie lived up to its name for sure. Since I had insisted upon watching this particular movie, my friends physically assaulted me in the interval.
The point is, irrespective of movies, combined non-communal wave of emotion sweeps over the audiences, for E.g. “National Anthem” before every movie; disgust, agony and abhorrence over parking and walking issues after it.
Diverting from the topic for a while, a movie has a power to transform people temporary or permanent depending upon the individual and how we relate to the movie and the characters in it in general. Once upon a time I thought I could relate with A.K Hangal Sahib of famed “Sholay”. All I kept saying in those days was “Itna Sannata Kyun hai” and then I found the telecast of “Sansani” of Star News, “Sannate Ko Chirti Sansani”. The transformation was swift and effective. A new age superhero of our Times! A crime fighting super Star (Pun intended)!
Many a times I have noticed people dressed like Sanju Baba from Vastaav yelling “Pachhas Tola”, beautiful girls dressed like and idolizing Madhuri Dixit, Urmila, and Katrina. Sadly very few cool punch lines are ever given to Female actors in Bollywood; their existence is restricted to a Patni, potential Patni or a Woh. But O the times they are a changing – with films like “Being Cyrus”, “Ek Hasina Thi” “Anjaam”, where women have successfully portrayed powerful characters, standing ovation deserving performances. I have seen Auntijies looking mean after watching a Lalita Powar Flick, Uncles looking meek after Parikshit Sahani and Alok Nath’s sympathetic performances. Trust me; I have seen people dressed as Ghosts after enjoying India’s M.Night Shyamalan – Ramu’s movies.
Reverting back, what exactly is it about cinema that cuts across caste, creed and sexes; makes us look up to the silver screen sitting in balconies and upper stalls for answers?
Or are we sitting there enjoying a piece of fiction to forget all the questions, which haunt us? I think it goes a bit deeper than the make-up, glitterati and Technicolor. A movie surely cuts across the entire social strata in the rawest form – of course some people like what they see and some people don’t. But as they say, aren’t such differences that make us Human?
Well, there are some things that we can not explain or answer and Cinema, in my opinion, has successfully achieved what Government could not in the last 62 years. Collective National Emotions on any given single subject – acknowledging differences at the same time.
Mera Bharat Mahan – Highly inflammable. Horn, OK Please – Use Dipper at Night.
