My Relationship with Cinema

I was barely 3 when I watched The Lion King. The big screen has been my first and only crush ever since.

No matter how logical and mature I’ve grown up to be, I still continue to believe in poetic justice, that good things happen to good people and there’s magic in the air and tomorrow’s going to a better day.

 

This is Cinema and it keeps alive, the light in me.

There is more than one reason to feel such a deep connection with movies. If one movie-critique attempted to pen down all those possible reasons, they could go on forever. There is drama in reel as well as real life with only the difference of a background score. Cinema is more than exciting and I somehow come up with a whole range of fabulous excuses to watch and re-watch some of the greats and also look forward to the upcoming flicks that will be thrown my way! Here I’ve managed to come up with a way to explain my complex relationship with movies!

The films are kitschy, illogical, often defy common sense and yet I love them. Why do I love them? The numero uno reason has to be the provision of an escape into a world where I can check my brain at the door or simply get so involved that I might just live the surreal. The films are brimming with the idea of how a perfect world would be; femininity is revered, everyone is saved by the superhero or the genius and love in its purest form " well most films are essentially about this. The Indian film industry even gives a song for every mood possible and a location. For those few hours I can engross myself by looking at possible fashion trends, pointing out things I want to my companion, or biting my nails in all nervousness to see if my favourite character survives in the thriller, and not doing much else. Either way, it’s like my very own ‘emergency exit’!

Moreover, I feel more ‘normal’, more human when I watch a movie and my family seems less insane. In trying not to state the obvious about these, I would like to say that one of the things I love most about these movies are their exploration of the human condition. Movies like Piku and The Breakfast Club give more of a real feel whereas, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge or Mean Girls, which have set the benchmark for over a decade, are a little more elaborate. More or less, I adore them all.

 Whilst some movies tend to be fairly sterile affairs, full of vacuous special effects, men dressed in spandex, aggression and violence, characters as shallow as a pond in a drought, and plotlines as fine as filigree , others are full of characters deep in the mire of uncertainty, split loyalties, inconsistencies, passion, despair, joy and love. But all of them have something in common.  Escapism.

 I might not find a solution to my problems but I definitely get a break from them through the buttery smell of pop-corn and my favourite movie playing for probably the hundredth time on my tv screen, creating the flawless hallucination, leaving me baffled and confused on where does the trick actually lie?

The answer is 'nowhere'.

Because I believe cinema is art. Art imitates life and life imitates art. It’s inevitable. And we relate, on some level, to much or all of it.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t matter what genre it is or how much I criticise the unrealistic approach of a movie, there is always a perfect movie for when I’ve had a rough day or when I’m celebrating a great one, when I’m feeling intellectual or when I'm in the mood for some over the top non-sense. 

To sum it all up and stop myself from going on and on,to me movies are the perfect experience, the magic they have,  give us a couple hours of experience in the life we’ve always dreamt of or the life we could never picture! Therefore I make known, my relationship with movies is an intriguing one.  Is yours?