Pages

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

On movies

Of late, I have been reading up a lot on movies, movie reviews and following it up by watching lots of movies. I am not yet into watching them in DVDs, I just settle with whatever I chance upon on cable TV.And once I am done watching some movie that I like, it doesn’t have to be a masterpiece for me to like it, I generally follow it up by reading up whatever imdb.com has to say about the movie.

The other day, I watched CRASH , and followed up reading up on it on imdb.com. I loved watching the movie and then realized it won the Oscar for Best Picture and I would say, rightfully so. The one thing I loved in this movie was the way a lot of things were left unsaid. You are just there soaking up in the intensity of the moment, you don’t need words to reinforce that feeling. In fact words would spoil the effect for me.

I can quote many moments in the movie, a white officer gropes a black woman, she is deeply hurt and then later on, she is stuck in an accident, moments away from her car exploding, and this very officer comes and recues her. She says “Anyone but you”.. but he speaks her out, and braves the flames that are just emerging and rescues her in nick of time. She doesn’t thank him, that would have spoilt the entire scene. She just looks at him, poignantly and he looks at her while walking away.

And another where an Iranian store owner goes to shoot the locksmith, because of whom, his insurance claim is rejected. And as the store owner is about to shoot, the locksmith’s daughter comes and hugs him (the locksmith) trying to protect him.. a shot is heard but nothing happens.. here again, the emotions do the talking.. no words.. and I loved the scene..

I like it when movies leave scenes to the audience’s interpretation, or intelligence.
In Hindi movies, I liked Kaminey for this reason. The narrative just kept going forward without stopping to reinforce anything for the audience’s benefit. You could turn around and talk to the person next to you, and you would have missed an important plot point.

And then there are movies, where everything is so beautiful till characters involved open their mouth. Sigh! So yesterday I watched a Tamil movie, which was sort of inspired from Crash, I would say. But only sort of.. the whole story was different and the setting was all Indian, all tamil. So this police officer harasses a guy, just because he is muslim, and later on, this very muslim guy saves him from a terrorist attack. A meaningful thanking look would have been enough, but the policeman has to hold the other guys hand and thank him, which was totally unnecessary.

I would say, directors, please trust the intelligence of the audience.

PS: It is obvious, i had a very fruitfull weekend of movie watching and household chores. :)

2 comments:

Jeevan said...

I like your kind of sort on movies. Yes, many a time silence make sense more than inducing music.

I too watched the Vanam and i would say its good to see top actors join for this emotional end with human touch.

monu said...

yes.. me too like these kind of movies..