Film:Revolution:Friday:Theseus
The first film I remember
watching was 1942: A love Story in a shabby single screen theatre called Payal
in Siliguri, and ever since have been watching movies with a great religious
zeal and a spiritual fervor. I think, this mania can be attributed to a genetic
fault, as every family member were ardent moviegoers, with my father frequently
sporting Bachhan haircuts and my mother wearing that same Devdas sarees in
marriages. Nevertheless, cinema was always considered entertainment, a pass
time with no acknowledgement of its trans-formative power and magic. It was a
strange dialectic, with movies always being part of a live oral national discourse, yet
remotely significant. Cinema is an important aspect of the cultural landscape,
yet has been consciously ignored/subsided/censored/poisoned.
With the injection of progressive Jesuit Education, and passion for movies and quizzing in my life, the edge of
horizon of perception and understanding was ever expanding. The addiction of
movies as a past time with consumption of kitsch Bollywoodish garbage, metamorphosed
into the quest of the science, language and art of cinema. However, there were
two problems, accessibility and lone viewing. The accessibility problem was
mitigated to a certain extent with the great piracy boom in the early 2000’s and
with torrents and Internet, the accessibility question remains a non issue.
However, the other problem was a serious one. In a small town like Darjeeling, of
which I am sure applies to a number of other places in the country is that
cinema is not serious/art/meaningful; I remember this teacher telling me to
take real life more seriously than reel life. I did not understand this remark
then, but when I think today, about the remark, I strongly feel that Indian cinema and its flag bearers are
themselves responsible for films being perceived
as something which is non cerebral/jokish/frivolous and rather trivial.
However, coming back to the question of cinema as art, I find the insight by
the great Satyajit Ray very helpful, “Cinema is often not perceived as art, as
many argue it lacks the purity of a painting, abstract qualities of music, analytical
scope of the novel and the intensity of the theater.” However, with an ever
expansion in cinematic geography and landscape, it has the scope of all the
above virtues, and moreover, in a synthesis of all leads to the ability of
cinema being most powerful and profound of
all art forms.
My first dialogue
with cinema began with a film called Black Friday, which I saw on a pirated
print with Chintoo Candy ads scattered all over, and then, years later when it
was released, I saw it on a big screen with another 6 people in the audience,
and I was transformed. As I sit down to
write this post, after a stint of liberal education at Stephens, where a group
of us in smokey rooms and empty stomachs, cultivated a taste for the language
and idiom of cinema. The aesthetic poetry of WKW, the pathological edginess of
Scorsese, the genius of Kauffman and the visions of Satoshi Kon were considered
important landmarks/inventions/discoveries in the history of the mind and the
mankind. However, on this rainy day when I type, I feel a strong remorse at the
state of the Indian cinema multiverse. Though I do not deny that there have
been some good films but being the largest producer and consumer of cinema, the
number is too minuscule and microscopic. The apathy towards cinema being
art/serious/meaningful/relevance is similar to politics being
distant/impersonal/non participatory in the collective consciousness of the
majority population in our country. In the long process of self delusion and
maintenance of the existent cultural and psychological status quo, I can
safely say we have become ‘harmonious schizophrenics’.
Using the
revolutionary rhetoric, this era whether to be considered archaic/medieval/modern
or post modern, where surfing and torrents mean different things altogether, we
are heading towards a crucial stage in human evolution/development/progress and
this will extend to the domain of Indian cinema. The Director’s rare will
become prominent; the breed of movie makers belonging to parallel cinema will
continue its profound quest for art/language/science in cinema and other
frivolous mainstream in its race for ascent of 100/500/1000 and so on crore
mark will be forever afflicted by the Sisyphean curse. The contours of cultural
landscape are changing, and will get a head start with one of the most
important films of our times, The Ship of Theseus, and I guarantee new
paradigms will emerge. Like the Theseus’s paradox, the parts of the old ship
are being replaced, with new ones, and Indian cinema will change forever.
What a brilliant piece !
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