A Time To Reflect

charukesi November 14th, 2003

Watched again His Highness Abdullah, a Malayalam movie…. Fantastic movie… No other description…..

As someone said, music has the charms to soothe the nerves of a wild beast…. and the movie is based on this simple theme.

A hired assassin, Mohanlal, whom the world knows as a ghazal singer, comes down from Bombay to kill a Raja. The Raja, a patron of music, is surrounded by greedy relatives after his wealth. Once in Malluland, Mohanlal has a change of heart, induced purely by the music around him.

The music is still ringing in my ears; gives me goose-pimples every time I hear the songs. What makes the Mals such connoisseurs of good music, in good cinema ?

Not to worry, this is not a eulogy of Mals but a lament about the lack of good cinema otherwise.

How do the Mallus churn out movie after awesome movie ? With the wafer-thinnest of story-lines and non-existent formulae ? And all in “main-stream” cinema. (Sure, I saw a “chorus white-dressed extras in the open spaces” kind of song recently in a Mal movie but then I think that is an aberration rather than the norm)

Regional cinema still manages to produce a few gems every year. I can speak for Tamil with certainty. Am not qualified to comment on other languages but I suspect there are good small budget movies being made in languages like Bengali and Telugu.

But Hindi cinema ? What goes by the name of main-stream or popular cinema is an insult to the average cinema-goer’s intelligence, whether he is from a metro or a small small town….

True, there have been some good films recently, 3 Deewarein, Mr and Mrs. Iyer, to name just a couple. But :
1. these are few and far between
2. they go by the name of alternate cinema (saying art is passe in film and a cultural gaffe, and the term parallel cinema reminds me more of geometry than cinema)

I keep wondering : why is there so little experimentation ? is there lack of creativity in main-stream cinema professionals ? or is it lack of guts to deviate from the formula ? Or the belief that Hindi film audiences are dunces ? too dim to appreciate the nuances of fine cinema ?

There must be some reason….

And some day when intelligent and sensitive cinema is available to main-stream (how I hate this word) audiences.

• - Cinema