Celebrating Cinema!

It feels only like yesterday watching movies on a black and white screen where the hero and the heroine are doing a romantic song with the hero driving a car with traffic and lights moving in the background and artificial movement being created on a static car set in the studio (and of course,notice the hero swinging the steering of the car from left to right as if he were steering a submarine... how in the world could the heroine actually sit in a car being driven in such a way without throwing up is a big question mark! ;) Engaging the audience with closest-to-reality 'incidents' that left an "I can associate with it" feeling was important and the audience lapped it up gleefully then.

Cut to today-

Avatar is a perfect example of cinema not because it is the costliest ever movie nor because it is loaded with high-funda technology but simply because it still has not lost track of the fact that the audience need to be told a story and through the medium of cinema (reminds me of the technology is an enabler and not a replacement example!!) The movie, for all its complexities, has a fairly straightforward undertone that man is the root of all evil to the environment. No one will want to watch a movie that doesnt dramatize this message because movie is all about drama - a drama that people want to go and watch for 2 hours and forget everything else around.

The scene where Jake actually gets to try out his 'bird' for the first time is a perfect example of how much power cinema is capable of in conveying depth of emotion. His initial unsuccessful attempts at climbing atop the bird, his subsequent success at taming the bird, then his first little sky diving session atop the bird and then his absolute joy at having tamed the bird and flying blissfully across the skies, joined subsequently by his 'girlfriend on her bird' accompanied by beautifully rhythmic drums as background score and of course the ultimate thrill of almost feeling him fly in 3D kind of sums up the "I was here when it happened experience" and actually takes the "I could associate with it" to the next level with an "I would love to be a part of this"!

For that matter, some of the more intense battle sequences are also very well 'described'. If you were to put down this part of the movie on paper, it would just be "battle begins, bad guy ultimately gets killed, good guy survives, and they lived happily ever after". This is not an attempt at comparing literature and cinema but just a layman's joy at watching a one line plot pan out into a 20 min audio-visual delight!

Perhaps, what hasn't changed about cinema since its beginning is its ability to enthrall the audience with 'let-loose' imagination and the 'even I can do it' mentality (remember the famous bell-bottoms or the XXL size plastic framed goggles!) It remains the average human being's closest medium of fulfilment of make-believe aspirations (I wanna be like Tom Cruise)and basking in the glory of fulfilled aspirations (I have finally achieved the Tom Cruise look!) A toast to Cinema!

What just happened????

Recently I was out on a trip to some place in Andhra and I had complete strangers for company... So how would you expect some typical ice-breaking conversations to have gone? Thankfully, I have sampled some..

Middle-aged man: (smile) Beautiful place, huh!
Me: (smile back) Yeah, Absolutely beautiful!

(pause for a couple of mins while both of us are supposedly admiring the 'beautiful' place)

Middle-aged man: (scans you around from the corner of his eye careful not to meet your eye)(unfortunately eyes meet) It gets pretty cold at night here I heard
Me: (plastic smile) Of course, the mountains all around must make it cold
Middle-aged man: (nod of the head) Yeah, yeah.. you are absolutely right!

(pause again)(meanwhile another young lady comes by and joins the company)
Young Lady: (looking at both of us) So, place is really beautiful right?
Middle aged man: (looks at me with an 'I told you so' look) Yeah yeah. We were just discussing how beautiful the place is and how cold it gets at night.
Young Lady: (nodding in approval) Yeah yeah. The mountains. Should be really cold at night

15 mins of the conversation - Moral of the story - Beautiful place and cold at night!
God.. I hate ice breakers!

* * * * *

This was a bus journey on the same trip. Everyone is tired after a long boat ride and nodding away to sleep. Suddenly I hear a young girl from somewhere in front of the bus start to sing some classical Carnatic music. 'Hmmm. Pretty Good', I wonder. Then something happens. There's a woman in the row in front of mine suddenly cranes her neck to look at who is singing, spots the girl, turns around quickly to her husband sitting next to her who, by the way, has just sprayed a pain killer for his hurting ankle and gone off to sleep. She taps him violently and says (in Telugu),' hey, look up, someone's singing'

"She is singing well,no" the lady declares approvingly to her husband. Confused at suddenly being violently woken up and then realizing the consequences of offering a 'dead bat' to this conversation (Amazing how quickly his brain senses 'danger' even in half sleep!!) he clears his throat, looks at his wife and starts singing the same song that the young girl in front is singing. (Probably realizing that's his passport to getting away!) YES!! he actually started singing!!!! and thats when his wife says "Shhhhhh!! Let the young girl sing. She has got a beautiful voice, no!" The husband nods "Yes, Yes, she has got a nice voice" and he closes his eyes to 'enjoy' the song!!

* * * * *

End of the trip, last lunch before the final bye-byes, the young lady comes up to me and asks " So, had a good time. You were pretty silent throughout the whole trip. Not feeling well?" I just smile to say alll izz well. Then she goes on "Hmmm. It was a good trip, no.. Quite enjoyable" I nod again and say "Yes it was good". The middle-aged man passes by, looks at me and says " Hey.. nice trip right? It was nicely organized". Both of us nod back and say "Yes. Good fun. Only it was a bit cold during the night"

End of trip! :)