In an individual sense, tell me the movies a person watches, and you can tell the character of a person. Well not exactly. If you take an individual movie there might be a lot of deviation due to the personal qualities of the actors, director etc.
But, if you take a list of movies over a huge sample set in an era those personal qualities could get flattened out and what emerges out is a picture that speaks of those who lived that era, their tastes and their mentality and even their history and demographics. /p p Conversely, movies of a particular era shape the thinking, style culture of an era. Thus, there is a heavy correlation between movies of a particular era and the contemporary society.
Why Americans loved War movies during 40 s and 50 s (including the all time top - Casablanca), why they loved science fiction in 80s (Terminator, Back to the future) or fantasies in 2000 s (LOTR, Harry potter due to a greater purchasing power of teenagers and young adults), why Indians loved religious movies till 50 s and romantic movies in the 90s reflect the contemporary society and demographics (in the last case due to the greater power of teenagers and young men). For the purposes of this paper, I would like to take the two of the biggest film industries in the world - Hollywood Bollywood (Hindi) along with a regional film industry in India - Kollywood. There is a strange correlation between the first and last, while the middle one seems to have a converse relationship.
/p p Late 60s to 70s represent a new era in American and world society. It is the start of the baby boomer generation (people who came after the war had more number of kids and started building up the society) and the presence of so many youngsters started influencing the music and movie industries. Elvis, the Beetles and dozens of other pop, rock music guys changed the total atmosphere of the soft serene western music.
Counter culture develop and hippy became fashionable. In a lot of ways, the movies reflect this contrary counter culture. While the preceding era had some stunning concept movies like Casablanca, Citizen Cane, Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mocking Bird, this era was famous for its darker movies closing on underworld and darker human aspects - movies like Godfather (1972) its sequel (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979), Taxi Driver (1976), or even the dark humor M*A*S*H (1970) defined the tradition.
Later in the era, new generation of movies started to sprout reflecting the scientific advancements of the era that led to the 1980s style. Some of the samples in the category include the Star War Start Trek series of movies. /p p While, Hollywood film industry was limiting in its dark hits, Hindi film industry was in its peak with its lively bright movies.
It defined one of the greatest era, with the new booming generation of actors that broke the tradition from the past. Amitabh Bachan, Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna, Zeenat Amman and the young Kapoors took over the rein of the old Hindi cinema and brought life to it. All time hits like Sholay (1975), Andaz (1971), Aradhana (1969), Bobby (1973), Don (1978) Dewar (1975) appeared in this period and Hindi songs showed a marked difference.
Inspired by their western counterparts and some original scores, Hindi films stunned Indian cinema (and most parts of West Asia) with their songs. And a lot of people believe that Hindi Cinema never ever reached back its zenith as that era. /p p While Hindi movies were reveling in its great heights, the southern film industry of Kollywood, followed the tradition of Hollywood.
While, its 1950s 60s movies produced a great style and bright concepts, the 70s era was a peak for darker concepts. Actors like Rajni Kanth, Kamal Hasan began their career with darker and psycho concept based movies directed by Balachandar. Movies questioned the individual relationships and pondered deep on concepts like love, family, etc.
And a few movies were remade from Hindi film industry and the music quality was going down. /p p The 1980s was a markedly different style in that it was subdued and the movies were light. The movies and people still showed the reminiscences of Beetles-Boney M culture that reflected in their trousers, their hair-styles and even the back ground music of the movies.
1980s in Hollywood followed the late 70s scientific era with its own good movies like Terminator (1984), Back to the Future (1985), ET the most of the Star Wars Star Trek series. Except for these occasional hits, this era is almost forgettable from a collector s perspective. /p p Hindi Tamil movies in the era continued their bright nature movies and brought more comedy into the system.
Tamil film industry particularly brought its peak in humor with all the major actors bringing their own variety. Rajnikanth with his Thillu Mullu (1981) and Guru Shishyan (1988) was in his highs only to be beaten by Kamal Hassan bringing his best humor performances in Aboorva Sagodarargal (1988), Pesum Padam (1988) and Michael Madana Kama Rajan (1990). But, in terms of concept and magnificence this era was a passable one for all these film industries.
/p p 90s marked a significant and the greatest era for the Hollywood industry. It brought the greatest concept movies like Swashank Redemption (1994), Shindler s list (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Cast Away (2000), Braveheart (1994) late in the era movies like The Matrix (1999), Gladiator (2000) A Beautiful mind (2001) - extending into the millennium. Some of the all time block blasters like Jurassic Park (1993), Titanic (1997) crowned while interesting action movies like Speed (1994), Mission Impossible (1996), MIB (1997), T2:Judgement Day(1991), True Lies (1994), The Mummy (1999), Charlies Angels (2000) and total humor like The Mask (1994) There s Something About Mary (1998).
The extraordinary variety, stunning concepts, crowning actors (Cruise, Hanks, Crowe Schwarzenegger) and directors marked this greatest era for Hollywood film industry. /p p While, Hollywood was peaking, Hindi industry was almost tanking. It was a bare shadow of its earlier past after the great actors music directors left.
The movie industry now started focusing purely on romance family centric movies. Some the greatest in this era include Hum Apke Hein Kaun (1994), DDLJ (1995), KKHH (1998) KKKG (2000) and they were all romantic movies. There were not many concept movies or awe-inspiring block busters.
/p p While Hindi was tanking, Tamil cinema rose to its peak just like Hollywood, in its own style. The humor of 80s were given way to concept, action and block buster movies. Director Shankar produced three of the all time greatest concept movies in Tamil - Gentleman (1993), Indian (1996) and Mudalvan (1999) followed by Mani Rathnam s Roja (1993), Alai Payude (2000) Bombay (1995).
Actor Rajni Kanth produced two of his sensational movies Dalapathy (1991) and Badshah (1994), while Kamal Hassan produced 3 great movies in a sequence of 4 years that were nominated for Oscar foreign film official entry from India, including Devar magan (1992), Kurudi Punal (1995) Indian (1996) and then later for Hey Ram (2000), apart from his great action in the remake of Mrs. Doubtfire in Hindi Tamil. From the middle of decade, an upcoming actor Vijay produced some of the best romantic movies like Poove Unakaga (1995), Kadaluku Mariyadai (1997) and Tullada Manamum Tullum (2000).
The movies were also in spectacular style, color and awe-inspiring settings like those of Kadal Desam (1996), Minsara Kanavu (1997) Jeans (1998). Inspired by the scores of the great music director A. R.
Rahman and some great concepts, Tamil cinema for the first and only time dominated the Indian film industry and dozens of its music and movies were remade in Hindi and other languages. /p p Current era starting from the millennium marks a considerable difference to the earlier era for Hollywood. The rise of technology and teenage kids gave way to immature teenage fantasy movies to take center stage in this era.
Movies totally divorced from reality like Lord of the Rings series, Harry Potter series, Charlie the chocolate factory and slightly more sensible Spider Man series Pirates of the Caribbean started to dominate the era. While the sequels for Mission Impossible, X-Men, Terminator and film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code were totally disappointing, movies like Crash could have been made better though it stood out a lone concept movie of the era. Though, we are just halfway through the era, it has already started to tank and the quality of movies have reached the nadir with directors focusing on teenagers immature young adults to produce their blockbusters.
Samples like Lady in the Water (2006) showed how worse a movie could be made. /p p The Tamil movie industry in its marked correlation with Hollywood is also digging its grave in a stark contrast to the earlier decade. Totally rubbish new heroes and actresses who know the least of acting started to dominate an era of imbecility and stupidity.
The occasional concept movies like Autograph (2004), romance like Roja Kootam (2003) and action like Ghilli (2004) have yet to cause a considerable shift in the era. Great actors like Rajni kanth, Kamal Hassan, Vijay and legendary directors like Shankar have rubbished themselves with some utter senseless moves in the era. /p p While both Hollywood Kollywood have totally fallen off, the silver lining is seen from the rise of Bollywood, in its greatest era.
While the earlier era were pure romantic movies and cheap thrills focusing on the local audience, Bollywood of the current era rose to satisfy the intellectual aspirations of educated guys both in India and abroad. As an example three great movies of Hindi history - Black (2005), Paheli (2005) Swades (2004) competed for Oscar entry last year, just like what happened in 1994 in Hollywood - a virtual clash of the Titans. Swades was one of the most perfect movies ever made in Hindi should rub shoulders with the likes of Shwashank Redemption Casa Blanca, led the pack though it was surprisingly let down by its audience.
However, two of the other greatest movies that were also made in the era - Laggan (2001) and Rang de Basanti (2006) got great approval from the audience and showed how good movies could be made. The humor mixed concept movies like Munnabhai series (2004 2006), Salam Namaste (2005) Dil Chahta Hai (2001) showed the new face of Hindi cinema with its dazzling colors. Some cool block busters like Dhoom (2004), Loc:Kargil (2003), Banty Aur Babli (2005), Don (2006) and soft romantics like Veer Zaara (2004), Parineeta (2005) gave color while Fanaa (2006) was a letdown - though well made, was illegal in its concept.
/p p Film industries show what an era of people like and an indication of their tastes. Like business cycles, movies too have their high and low eras, sometimes coming alternatively. Movies of an era (roughly a decade) have some global similarities and eras could abruptly start and end with some stellar era leaders.
And there is also a great correlation between movie industries, the complementary relationship between Hollywood Kollywood and their converse relationship with the middle guy - Bollywood. br/
I cannot watch trash for more than ten or fifteen minutes, by which time I am confident that my head will hurt if I continue watching. Even ten minutes on trash is painful, which leads me to hunt for reviews. It is quite rare for us to discover a reviewer whose tastes completely match our own, and hence can be depended on every time.
But how often have you found a reviewer whose tastes are the exact opposite of yours, and hence equally dependable? /p p Yes, I am writing about Taran Adarsh, the highly-quoted reviewer from IndiaFm.com.
Some years back, I was quite amazed to see a high-quality movie like i Swades /i and was stunned to see Adarsh s review on the subject. He gave it a 1.5 out of 5, on the grounds that it was boring!
At first I was angry. Then, I started looking at ratings he s given to other films I really liked. And I discovered a pattern.
Every film I consider great cinema is trashed by Adarsh on the grounds that the i aam junta /i will not be able to appreciate it, while most movies that I consider trash end up with his glowing approval. I found this correlation so fascinating that I decided to dive in deeper. /p p Using AllBollywood.
com, I obtained ratings from different sources in one go and assumed that IndiaFM and Taran Adarsh are synonymous (this may not hold and I will stand corrected if someone points it out). Shown below are the ratings Indiafm gives films that I consider good cinema: /p p Now, let s see what he says about films that don t qualify as good cinema (in my opinion). /p p The numbers may not tell the entire story.
So we need to look at the reviews themselves. In the review for i Black /i , he writes, /p blockquote Fine art - an abstract one at least - might be appreciated by those who understand it. But for the common man, who does not comprehend or decipher it, it s an exercise in futility.
That s the problem with BLACK. /blockquote p The common man did end up deciphering i Black /i and turning it into a hit. As for i Swades /i , he writes, blockquote Unfortunately, SWADES disappoints big time.
The story of SWADES would ve been ideal for a documentary, but for a feature film with a running time of 3 hour plus and starring the country s biggest star, it just doesn t work. /blockquote /p p i Swades /i did well abroad but flopped in India, perhaps due to reviews like this one. I found it to be deeply inspiring.
/p p Let s turn our lens to the not-so-great films of our time. Adarsh writes about i Krrish /i , The film works, and works big time. Three of the first four paragraphs focus on the pedigree of the film and much less about the film itself.
Before even beginning with the story, we re told, br/ blockquote In a nutshell, KRRISH is a terrifically exciting and compelling experience. Move over SUPERMAN, BATMAN and SPIDERMAN. KRRISH, the Indian superhero, has arrived!
/blockquote /p blockquote Certain films are targeted at the festival circuit and also to win critical acclaim. The story and the execution are so abstract that you actually wonder whether an avid cinegoer of today would be able to comprehend it. /blockquote p i Raincoat /i was in fact my favorite film in the list and a movie that made me believe Ajay Devgan is one of the most underused actors of our time.
/p p One may argue that reviewers are entitled to their opinions. Sure. Let s be clear that we understand what the expectations are from a reviewer.
Consider a wine taster, who recommends a good wine for the rest of us who don t have the time to taste every wine in the county. Imagine our wine expert finding an exquisite wine and remarking, This wine cannot be appreciated by the common man, so I will give it a poor rating. This is the logic that Adarsh uses most of the time when criticizing what I consider good cinema.
It is the job of the reviewer to help educate the common man, so we may appreciate art and beauty. We are let down by a reviewer who keeps us from that goal and instead confines us to the crudest sensibilities. /p p However, there is good news here.
Taran Adarsh is actually a dependable critic. All I had to do was reverse his rating to figure out if a film is worth watching. I tried this with a new film - i Kabul Express /i .
And sure enough, Adarsh gave it a 2.5 rating. In his review, he wrote, A film like KABUL EXPRESS is more for the elite and the thinking viewer than the aam junta.
/p p I knew immediately that this would be a movie worth watching. As expected, I was deeply impressed, both with the film and with my discovery of this correlation between Adarsh s ratings and good cinema. As long as Adarsh does not upgrade his taste, I know how to filter trash and get to the gems.
br/
/p p I didn t know much about the movie, except that it was Alfonso Cuaron s (of i Y Tu Mama Tambien /i , and i Harry Potter The Prisoner of Azkaban /i fame) post-apocalyptic world, and had something to do with global infertility in humans. And that s all Cuaron actually tells us. Right away, we re immersed in this gritty, dirty, terrifying world, where everything seems to have gone wrong, but we aren t given any explanations for it.
I say we re immersed in the world because we aren t introduced to it, almost as if we actually did live in that world and were watching a movie then. /p p So there we are, in 2027, in London, England, seemingly the only country that has survived, if you can call it that, the war and complete destruction of the rest of the world, and we see the top story of the day blaring out on the ubiquitous TV screens. The world s baby, the youngest person alive at 18 years old, has just died.
We re shown mass outpouring of grief all over the country and the world, shock at the loss of this individual, more signs in fact, that humanity doesn t have much hope ahead of it. /p p Cuaron doesn t treat us to super-technical wizardry or amazing innovations, to tell us about how the world is different in the future. Instead, we see how the world has changed for the people, how Britain s turned completely anti-immigrant and is even deporting huge numbers of non-Britons , how religious groups are saying that the worldwide infertility is the punishment of God and how the government has begun to hand out suicide packs allowing you to go the way you want to .
/p p But, again, this information is dealt to us in tiny doses, in small fleeting observations, just as we might infer the socio-political atmosphere of a movie set in Mumbai, without the film makers actually meaning to tell us what the socio-political atmosphere is. /p p The plot surrounds a former activist, Theodore Faron, played by Clive Owen, a government agent with an activist history, who is suddenly thrust (back?) into the world of the rebels fighting against the government s deportation of immigrants and its other policies that they believe resulted in the dystopian world they now live in.
And the reason for him to come into this world? He has the necessary influence and papers to be able to safely transport a young girl out of the capital to a fugee camp, wherein lies a growing organisaton committed to improving the status of Humanity, even at the risk of angering the government. Why is the girl so important?
She s the first person in 18 years to be carrying another person in her. That s right, she s pregnant. /p p But don t worry, I haven t given away the story to you, this is all just the beginning, it s the authenticity of this future world that gets me to write so much, that allows me to say so much about what happens in those first 20 minutes of the movie.
The story is just about to begin. /p p Clive Owen plays a reluctant hero - he wants to help, but it takes some time to get past his own inner problems before he gets completely committed to the task and its outcome. But we see this initial lack of empathy with those around him, the rebels; we see him slowly allowing that political activist of old take over the disenchanted government employee.
And we believe in him. This isn t quite the guy we would be, no, we d probably be all out to help, smart, kind, and heroic. But, sorry to burst our collective bubbles, this is the guy who d probably end up actually doing something like this.
/p p Claire-Hope Ashitey plays the other most character who s with us throughout the film, which does end up almost like a road movie/running away movie/running towards movie in the end, as the young girl who all the fuss is about, and while she does put up a wonderful performance, she s sitting right next to Owen the whole film and so can be excused if she doesn t exactly shine through. Still, she is convincing, invites genuine sympathy, gets to meet some marvelous actors, and now has an amazing start to her career. /p p With smaller roles, we get to see the two other big name actors that help round up the stellar performances of the film.
Julianne Moore, and to a larger extent Michael Caine. Moore plays Owen s former wife, and the leader of the little rebel band that brings his character back to the action, and Michael Caine plays a Owen s award winning cartoonist friend, who leads a lonely life out in the country, but springs to life when he has to help out friends, and provides some useful comic relief, or rather some lightness in the face of all the sombre events unfurling around the little group. /p p And then there s the directing.
Technically this is a brilliant movie, and it s got some of the most amazing scenes, both subtle and obvious, that I ve seen the whole year. Having received 91% freshness over at Rotten Tomatoes, reviews filled mostly with praise for Cuaron more than anything else in the movie, one critic even going so far as to call it the finest movie of the millenium, before sobering up and saying that it may not be of the millenium but it s still one damn fine movie, Cuaron certainly has a keeper here. There are a few particular scenes (if and when you watch the movie, you ll know what I m talking about) that hit you on both the obvious and subtle levels at the same time, and really get you thinking about both the subject matter and the filmmaking behind it.
These include a number of single-take shots through war-torn suburbs that really get you right in the gut, and one particular one that is very much the focal point of the film. You re going to enjoy these scenes, whether you just like films , or you re a die hard conoisseur. /p p I have just one problem with the film, and it s probably more to do with my having gotten used to the TV format and/or multiple features over the past month, and in a way over the past year, but I didn t feel it was enough.
I thought it was too short, that we could ve spent some more time in that world, certainly no more time for that story in particular, but at the end of it, I just wanted to be treated to some more of that world through those marvelous eyes. But I m sure this will clear up for me from just having a second watch of the movie, this time with other people, since the theater was practically empty when I watched it, and actually discussing it with other people, me not really knowing any other film geeks in person, and not having any conversations on the web about this film. /p p There were a lot of little touches that I loved as much as the big, social commentary that the makers, right from Novelist P.
D. James, to Writer (With a host of other writers) and Director Alfonso Cuaron made sure made it to the overall story. Things like the way Kee and her lady companion recite Om Mani Padme Hum, whenever they were worried, the way Shanti had become a word of the local culture, the way the future is depicted in non-futuristic ways with the cars and weapons of today, albeit a lot more battered and broken, the way that the immigrants, in their internment camps, join together in a rebellion shouting Allah hu Akbar, despite mostly coming from East Europe, the way the immigrant question is made significant and the way the movie ends.
/p p All in all, I have to say, I picked a magnificent film to start off the Award Season with, a technically superb, artistically marvelous film, that one really has to catch at the cinema to enjoy in its fullest, and one that I will most definitely be watching again.
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