Reviewing Cinema - My perspective

A few years ago, I took watching movies as a serious hobby. I would like to stress 'serious' here because, after a while, I realized that I was entitled to expect something from movies for the money and time I spend.

Therefore, whatever the movie maybe, I started to keenly observe and give my feedback to my friends. Whatever comments I gave/give are my personal opinions and need not be correct to the other viewers.

Here,  I am trying to explain what I want in movies, how they should be, what excites me, and what disappoints me. once again, these are my personal opinions and maybe totally idiotic for a person working in the film industry or to another cinema lover like me. Well, all fingers are not the same. If you point out my mistakes I will surely take those into my mind.  

Cinema is the next advanced version of stage drama. Using technical advancements, we can present a picture, which will be impossible in a stage drama. In simple terms, too many dialogues are not needed in a movie like a stage drama. If the differentiation does not exist, the purpose of making that movie fails. 

Art of movie making and points I keep in my mind before I give any comments: 

Story - of course, this is the first step. I'd like to brief only two methods that I value. There are more, like copying from an international movie and making it Indianised and making it a success. For example, 'Thozha' movie from 'Intouchables' or 'Gajini' from 'Momento'. That list is endless, therefore we'll focus on only two other methods being used frequently. 

One is - a storyline can emerge from an incident/s, which happened in the real world. Even top movie makers use this technique. They pick up a controversial or a popular incident and ornament it around with their touch and present to us. I have seen a few nice movies and few worst movies created like this.

Next is, creating a story by asking a simple question "what if". Even we can come up with ideas. For example, today I watched a Hindi movie "Lunchbox". The storyline is - what if 100% fail-proof Mumbai lunch delivery gives a lunchbox to a wrong address, and communication starts with one-paged letters - between a housewife and a lonely widower. Another example is, what if a nice man's tired sleep in a metro train is wrongly assumed as a drunkard and becomes viral in social media - 'Vikrithi (Malayalam movie).    

I prefer the second one most of the time. Because it needs an interesting, imaginative question and developing one line into a 120 minutes movie. It doesn't mean the first type is wrong but if we know the incident, órnamanting will be higher, which some times totally spoils that storyline.

Either way, developing from one line to a complete movie, it requires a tremendous effort. How the story develops, how many characters are going to be there, how those characters will be used, how to maintain continuity without distractions etc. It's a tough job.

My first expectation would be on the above - the story and how well it is developed and presented, and how unique the presentation is! The uniqueness should be such that - it should be pointed or referred to in the future. If the story and presentation fail, it is a big loss of my time by watching it.

Screenplay - I do not really know the entire aspects of the screenplay, though I know it is about how each scene of the entire story should be captured. I figure that if a movie makes me involved without any prejudices, the screenplay is good. If not, I'll remember it and be forced to comment.

Now we must observe acting skills. A good scene can be totally spoilt by bad acting. There's a catch here. Are the actors selected for a story - in the trust that they'll be able to deliver whatever is required or a story is searched for a particular actor? This is the biggest compromise we see in Indian movies. Nevertheless, if it is a good story and actors have done good acting, who is going to complain?

Unfortunately, here comes the popularised image of an actor in our place. Even a simple face emotion of a star is hailed and praised as excellent whereas in another movie an unknown person would have performed excellently but it will go unnoticed. In my opinion, a recent example is Guru Somasundaram's acting in 'Joker' Tamil movie (are you aware of that name?). Many of our heroes couldn't have done that as flawless as Guru did.

So, if an actor, irrespective of his popularity, not able to fulfill the expectation, it makes me sad. (many times, the story is modified to the level of an actor's acting skills!!). It deserves a comment.
   
Then comes the BGM (Back Ground Music) plus songs (in case of Indian films). We like good songs but if the songs distract us, or slows the story's flow - they're only useful for TV music channels. The audience won't like it. That's the reason why not only now but in the past too, we have seen few movies flopping but songs from those movies are super hit. So this is another aspect that we should look into.

Editing - I don't know much about this so I can not comment. 

There are a few more important inside jobs, which are blind to us, let's not bother about them.

Finally, who is responsible for bringing out the best in all the above points? Yes, the director of the movie. As long as the movie is good or satisfactory, it is clear that the director has done his job perfectly. Again, I don't have any prejudices against any director but I see few audiences firmly believing that - if it is directed by one particular director it should be appreciated, regardless of whether they have actually seen the movie or not.

In my younger days, it was Manirathinam. I couldn't understand why he was praised so high! I don't intend to say all his movies are bad. How can we simply give marking just by looking at the candidate's name? : ) Nowadays, it is Shankar. But audiences are clearer now. The frenzy lasts for one or two days. Then the movie gets what it deserves. 

I don't go to movies for a director's name. I don't even know what's the name of one of my favorite movies - Shawshank Redemption's director. After watching 'Ínception', I searched for the director's name and found that it is Christopher Nolan. But I was completely unaware that he was the director of, 'Insomnia', 'Batman Begins', and 'The Dark Knight raises'. His work should interest us not his name.

Therefore, I humbly submit the above points to substantiate the way I see movies and where I find glories and where I find the disappointments. This approach could be entirely or partially false. I will be very glad if you can show me my flaws and guide me to a better approach.

Thanks for reading

*********************************
R.Bharathram
29/05/2020