Good movies and bad movies Part I



Last week, during a weekend boozing session with my friends, we hit upon an interesting topic. What's a good movie? And why do we need a good movie?

I was fascinated by the second one. This is because the answer for the first question is actually relative. But my friends insisted that I answer the question. At least from my perspective. Thus went mine:

A good movie, just like any other good art, must be original and should reflect the life style and social and contemporary problems of your society. I'm saying this because I believe that wherever this happened, such societies flourished. Russia and France are great examples. Even in the pre-Independence India, the freedom movement grew from strength to strength because every activity in the art was driven towards that goal. The sixties America is considered active, progressive and effected various changes on the country and elsewhere because their art truly reflected their mindset.

Post Independence, certain great movies made people ask uncomfortable, yet, inevitable questions. Do Bheega Zamin woke up the conscience of the urban upper-middle class about the plight of rural India. Pyaasa made people squirm in their seat not out of disgust but of guilt. Kappalottiya Tamizhan (The Tamil Who Ran a Ship) kindled the nostalgia in people.

As recent as A R Rahman's Vande Mataram revived some amount of patriotism (albeit a pulp one) among millions of youth and elevated the spirit of 50th year of Independence. Karutthamma, Bharatiraja's movie about female infanticide made Tamilnadu government take various policy-level initiatives.

Apart from effective immediate changes, movies that reflect today bring life closer to the society and watching yourself on screen brings in certain accountability. Also, showing something that you are not, like dancing around trees in Switzerland, whips up a pseudo-fantasy in you that lets you deny what is happening around you. As citizens, we are an irresponsible lot. We don't follow traffic rules, stand in queues, or abide law. I would sqaurely blame the failure of our art for this.

We need good movies because we need a good society. Because the former shapes up the later.

Now the next question comes up. Where does this leave movies such as Spiderman? Jurrasic Park? Or in Indian example, Main Hoon Na? Kal Ho Na Ho? Or Tamil example, Samy? Basha?

To phrase the question: Where does my argument leave room for entertainment? Isn't movies meant to simply entertain us?

I'll address this question in the next post.