I shall be frank with you. When I was first asked to write this piece, I was a bit afraid. I was afraid I might end up lying; to myself and to all of you. I was, and still am, highly skeptical at my own ability to defend films.
I am no Shakespeare with words, nor am I a Spielberg at films. But I must write…I must, right?
For all those in favour will know by heart, as long as there is reasonable doubt, the show must go on.
In praise of Cinema Paradiso
What would you paint if I asked you to paint a picture of Innocence? A child? A flower? A box of crayons? Maybe a child colouring a flower with her favourite crayon. Works.
But, is that child a boy or a girl? What is she wearing? Is her tongue sticking out as she tries her best not to spill our of her lines? Is she lazing around on her hungry, grumbling tummy on a hot summer afternoon in the middle of the messy room? And oh! the way she dashes out of the room at the slightest hint of an ice-cream truck down the road!
How wonderfully simplistic it is to build an image out of my empty words. There is so much a writer can take for granted. How very convenient for her to run her pen until the ink dries up! Where is this endless paper coming from? The burden of imagination, and its limitation, at once, lies upon the reader.
It is harder to make a painting. There are cracks in the bright, sunlit floor, and the paint is falling off the walls. You didn’t see that before. Did you?
And then, there are films
Although it is true that almost every film begins as a script which is structurally very similar to a book, a film is by no means a mere moving of audio-visual adaptation of a storybook, the same way a house is not merely a pile of bricks and paint on a blueprint.
The Cinematic experience is a child born out of an eternal wedlock between Creative Arts and cutting-edge Technology at its best. Maybe that is the reason why true cinema is not just seen on the big screen but is felt deep within. It transports us to entirely different dimensions like the Planet of Pandora in Avatar, dives right in the middle of D-Day in Saving Private Ryan, levitates through the vast, endless space in Gravity, and also hypes the end of the world in 2012. And let’s not forget the Marvel Universe.
But these are just cheap Hollywood gimmicks.
There is a much deeper reason why films have been, and will be, one of the most popular forms of entertainment in modern times. Because films tell stories; stories about people; of you and me, in the most immersive and intuitive form of an artistic expression.
Contrary to popular beliefs, films are not about glamour. A film is about simplicity. It is about the human touch of emotions and longing that is missing in this modern world that is ever so more disconnected.
A film happens when people are enchanted by WallE and Eve breaking into a dance under the starlit sky, lost somewhere deep in outer space. It happens when you fall in love with Her, who is much more than Crotona or Siri will ever be. A film happens when Rachel finally realizes that Ross is her lobster.
A film happens in the little moments of joys and in the little moments of sorrows, just like in real life.
When the big screen lies
A writer sits and writes. Period. The making of a film is unarguably a much more costly and painstaking endeavour undertaken by the best of artists from across many disciplines to tell the same story. A film is enjoyed as a collective experience. We are descendants of tribal forest dwellers, after all. And is a good film any less than a memorable campfire folklore?
The entire world knocks itself over at the gibberish of Chaplin, as he transcends the boundaries of language that builds more walls than it breaks. Tom and Jerry taught us to laugh in the face of the tragedy of being stuck with a roommate we don’t like. And could there be a more simplified and universal retelling of Hamlet than, wait for it (yaaa sukanya gamachibabaaaa), The Lion King?