What Is Good Cinema ?

  What is Art Cinema? What is Commercial Cinema? How do movies influence people? Are movies worth watching today? 

  Today, the tinsel world of cinema is in deplorable condition. It can be likened to that of Samson, the Biblical legendary who, while bringing down his own death killed thousands of spectators pulling down the pillars on to them to which he was tied with his enormous God-given strength.

  Unmindful of its own moral collapse the cine media is swaying the millions of youth towards perversion in the name of entertainment.

  If one sees and reads between the lines one can understand what is what – the difference between formula and art movies. In order to promote the concept… the concept of art cinema, I lectured my friends and acquaintances on art movies and suggested them to see a movie which was then released, that depicts the life of a woman in the gutter.

  They listened to me, some with interest and some disdainfully.

  Finally when the saw the movie, I asked how they felt. They simply shrugged and wrote me off as a critic. However, one person who saw the movie said, it was good and captivating and promised to see it again as he seem to have missed something. I wondered at his missing ‘something’

  He saw it a second time and I questioned him with a smile. He said that he missed the same ‘something’. In his relentless pursuit of discovering the missing phenomena he kept repeating his goings to that movie.

  After performing the feat for the nth time, he gave up and sought me out. He decided to confide in me the feelings that kept lurking in his mind. He said, “You see, there is one scene…” He plunged into narration keeping me on tenterhooks, “...a railway track, at the backdrop a beautiful landscape, a mountain and at the foot of it there are trees and huts scattered like stars across the lake…’

  I was at a loss as to understand what he was driving at. And I did not interrupt him lest I miss a point here or a point there.

  He continued, “And in the lake to a lilting song in the background the heroine with no clothes on bathes enjoying the nature’s beauty.”

  I wondered what seventh heaven lay in there!

  He continued, “While the heroine swims in the lake to the lilting tunes in the background, suddenly a train from nowhere appears and moves synchronizing the bathing scene literally hiding the heroine,”

  “So what’s unusual in it?” I cut in.

  He said, “Look, don’t you know that our trains are notorious for inordinate delays?”

  “So what”, I exclaimed.

  “Nothing, I am hoping against hope that this train too will come late some day or the other as is customary with Indian Railways”

 

  “Then?”  I said.

  “Then, what then?” He said and stared at me quizzically.

  For a fraction of a second I did not understand. But when the sense dawned on me… his concept of art cinema, I was taken aback and torn asunder whether I had selected the right one for my promotional campaign of art cinema.

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