Cinema & society: The Obsession for Entertainment

Entertainment, entertainment and entertainment. 

That's the problem with 'Bollywood' or probably everything around us. We want to get entertained in everything that we listen or see on screen.

So, when the cars go flying in hot pursuits and heroes indulge in gravity-defying acrobatics, it gives us our dose of adrenaline rush and quenches our thirst of thrill, it satiates our craving for violence and sex, or in fine, emotions which otherwise we are not able to express. 

In our repressed society, most live like slaves jailed in our own cage, enslaved to our secrets, bottling everything inside. So we like to suck up all the on-screen delicacies, licking every drop of melting mussy love or erotica that Bollywood serves us.

No matter, how much the critics cry foul or the fans of Indian cinema smirk or scream in shame, such commercial potboilers will continue to be dished out and savored by the audience, who are so burdened by their everyday responsibilities of life that there is no space or time in their heart and mind to watch a real life story. 

Reality bores us. So we prefer to stay away from cinema which pinches us or questions our reality. So, a movie like 'Perched, Court' or 'Aligarh' or any film dealing with human trafficking or on any social issue will not have many takers, unless, they are written and portrayed with dollops of correct comic timings and carried on the shoulders of some big star. 

And if it so happens that a star acts in such a film, and the movie sinks, it further dissuades him and fellow actors to tread the path again and thus the circle of life continues. 

We all are stuck in this virtual world for eternity and nothing will push us to change that, although most of the film aficionados, who believe Cinema as an art, strive to bring that change.

Sometimes some exceptional story is told in an extraordinary way by filmmakers such as Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Vishal Bharadwaj and Shoojit Sarkar but most find it hard to find that balance, either turning it into a tear-jerker or a mockery in the name of comedy.

So the story continues. We don't want to see the bitter world around us. We don't want to see why so many people, army and civilians alike, are dying in Kashmir or northeast India or at the red corridor, we don't want to see how voices were crushed during the emergency, we don't want to see how people were stuck in a quagmire of emotions during the Sikh or Gujarat riots or partitions, we don't want to see the blood or hear the screams. 

No one wants to see the reasons which drives individuals to take decisions, No one wants to see the realities that dictates one's action. Probably we are either stuck in our so called self-righteous moral arrogance or we don't want to accept the truth because we are just too comfortable living a life we have learnt to believe in our mind as truth or perhaps we have forgotten the art of listening, observing and learning.

In a country, where most people still fight over what we eat, read, wear or look, cinema could have been a medium to bring that change in perception. It could have been a platform to educate them about the changing scenario around us, teach them about the taboos and social evils that plague this country, problems which is eating our roots away. 

Where education failed, cinema could have been that bridge of enlightenment.

A postmortem of 'Baar Baar Dekho'

Often crystal stones can hide amidst diamonds but when they are all by themselves, the lie gets noticed and they are exposed, sometimes too easily. While this could be a poor analogy to make, Siddhartha Malhotra and Katrina Kaif suffers from a similar fate in 'Baar Baar Dekho'.

The two actors with tremendous screen presence flourished in scenes where they have to dance, sing and act all cutie-pie but fails when have to emote raw human emotions. Better actors would have hold on the attention for longer time. Of course, even that perhaps would not have been enough to save this film because of the poor script and screenplay.

In Indian film industry, we have not experimented with the idea of time travel or repetition of a day like in films 'GroundHog day' or 'Time travellers wife'. So in that respect, there was novelty in the idea for Indian audience. But it is a cut-throat world where implementation matters more than intentions and the film doesn't deliver much in that respect.

Like most rom-com from Dharma productions, the film is bright and vibrant in colours and texture and looks very slick with good music. But the banality of all that happens in the script is a problem.

The fact that the protagonist skipping timeline of his life is the main plot of the film, it is introduced too late and with comic treatment. The film lacks in enough twists and details that can create the confusion which needs a resolution in the end and drags to deliver the message.

Also Jay being a mathematical genius doesn't affect the film in anyway. His ambition to research on vedic time travel also doesn't affect because it wasn't actually a time travel film like 'About time' or Time Travellers Wife. It was more of magic realism.

If the character would have used his knowledge of vedic science to resolve this problem then it would have mattered. It was afterall more a story of an ambitious man who doesn't give time to family to follow his dream but he not realising it for most parts is a rare stupidity that doesn't suit such a mathematical genius.

Baar Baar Dekho is not the worst film that have been made on relationship but it lacks clarity and enough punch to entertain or interest the audience. So another opportunity lost because it had potential of being something different for Indian film industry.

Sadly for Katrina, after 'Fitoor' it is her second flop. Both films had interesting story line but lacked implementation. For Siddhartha, it is a wake up call to work harder on his acting skills to come back stronger with his next film.