Love can be a brute sometimes. In cinema more so. Ever felt this magical sensation sweep you off your feet, when you sit in that darkened room and the flittering images pass in front of you whilst you sit with baited breath not even once blinking your eyes?
Verisimilitude they call it? I detest that word. It isn’t just as simple as suspension of disbelief. This word just makes it sound so mechanical … its steel-like skirls drive away the warm impassioned sensation. Its not even butterflies in your stomach or belly or bottom or however else they describe it … the barbarous critics … ignoble buzzards the whole lot.
It is more than that ... much more than that. The sensation is beyond the realm of the physical …its surreal, its heavenly, uplifting, makes your body feel lighter so much so that it floats. Its orgasmically cathartic. When the crescendo of the cinema builds and falls so does that of one’s heart beat.
It is another world all together. Each piece of art bound and gagged in around 14 thousand feet of film roll giving us anshchauung pleasure. Its exalting if not anything else.
When a crippled boy starts running to save himself from the local goons and becomes the fastest runner in town in about 15 minutes, one cannot help but feel an exhilarating pang of joy, of contentment. When an American girl stuck in 1950’s Havana, Cuba; meets young Javier and love starts brewing up in the sizzling, musical, impassioned streets, corners and beaches, of Habana one cannot help but feel like falling in love, for the first time or all over again whilst dancing in the privation of solitude.
More than an emotion insinuator … cinema is art … and art has always always and forever invited trouble for itself like a juvenile with an overactive imagination from its contemporaries. Understandable!
But … Ok! Lets say there are 5 of these juveniles we study here.
Numero Uno – Bride and Prejudice. Directed by Gurinder Chaddha. Rating – Fair enough hit on my charts.
Numero Dos – Black – Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Rating – Super Hit.
Numero Tres – Passion of the Christ - Directed by – Mel Gibson – Superduper Hit.
Numero Cuatro – Fanaa – Directed by Kunal Kohli – Rating – fate yet to be decided.
Numero Cinco – The Da Vinci Code – Directed by Ron Howard – Rating critics hate it crowds love it for starters. We shall wait for it to run for more weeks.
Now, problems lie with not uno and dos but with tres, cuatro and cinco. In Tres Mel Gibson made the wise mistake of painting the ‘well rounded’ character of Mary Magdalene through the ever so enchanting strokes of Monica Belluci. For obvious reasons people had problems with this portrayal of Jesus’ life. According to some critics this would enflame anti-Semitic feelings and with their atavistically current arousal rate this could be explosive. Fine. Kill the art!
Poor Cuatro, hadn’t done any of that. Its just an innocent portrayal of innocent terrorists trying to get a last key ingredient into finally making Kashmir autonomous. “Now isn’t that what everyone wants?” Tut! … Isn’t that what each one of our militant organizations want? So anyway poer nano cuatro was admonished because Mr. Kohli made the wise mistake of hiring Aamir Khan. Helooooo? What was he thinking? Aamir Khan might just be one of the greatest Bollywood acts around at this time but he did whatever he did for the Narmada Bachao Andolan. I mean Duuhhh! What was Aamir thinking? All that being out in the sun could’ve been very bad for his skin. So anyway, cuatro wasn’t admonished for what usually these type of films are admonished for. It might have had the capacity of aggravating tension in the already extremely tensile and truly current issue of Kashmir had it been a well made film. But hey, what do we care. We just need a reason to be out there protesting … Aamir Khan hai hai! Weeehhaaaa!
Cinco Poor Cinco. Its elder brother Cinco Sr. has been rated the best selling book of all times after only the Holy Bible. Cinco Jr. though faces trouble. Lots of it. Now everyone understands that dappling with theosophical issues can be extremely hazardous for the film team’s health. Ron Howard like some others obviously overlooked that. Despite it being an established fact that cinco is a piece of fiction … it seems its journey from novelland to filmcity has conjured its corpulent personification. Its art. Love it don’t try to live it.
Cinco has been banned out of all the places … in Punjab. My little brain obviously fails to put two and two together in this case. My problem being why wasn’t uno banned in Punjab. According to the rest of the country and its resident religious communities … Uno was an act of defamation against the city of Punjab, a slander depicting the people in a very derogatory light. I mean did u SEE the song sequence in the street. It was completely filled with anagrams and acronyms symbolizing the miniature brain size of the people of Punjab and their subsequent flakiness.
And why on earth did everyone love dos. He’s a pure pure devil. The name says it all. The opulence of its canvas, the flatness of the characters, the lack of sincerity, the lack of ingenuity, the whole jing bang. In each of the scenes, Mr. Bhansali and everyone else involved were busy talking big words, getting peoples over active tear glands grooving than touching upon the main issue. Who cares what people with dysfunctional organs and body parts really feel. Who cares what helplessness really is. What I care about – is Mr. Big B’s fake accent … Lighhttth …Woiiaattaa. What I care about is the fact that Khamoshi didn’t work so I need to churn out opulent grand colossal hits irrelevant of the fact that they might be superficial. Fine. Kill the art!
There is a point to all this and you will see it now. When we are so capable of appreciating cinema that is derogatory to our own selves, cinema that jests our existent behavioral practices, cinema that condemns the way of our lives … why cant we appreciate cinema that condemns someone else’s. Who cares, just watch it for what it is. A beautiful treat to the eyes … most of it. Taking you places, showing you make believe characters in actuality, singing “I can show you the world, shining shimmering splendid, Tell me princess now when did you last let your heart decide…”
Cinema is not about ‘U n’ Me’s’ personal agenda. Its about the filmmaker’s agenda. You take it or leave it. How is protesting against it going to help. Someday when you’re dead and knocking on heaven’s door, who knows they might not open the door for you … because you protested against someone else’s bread and butter. Which is why you didn’t see me protesting against the release of Uno or dos.
When will we finally grow as human beings? When will personal agendas be refrained from becoming societal or public agendas? When will art be appreciated for what it is … juvenile and delinquent or honest and peaceable, whichever the case.
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