PH Survey 2014






Cinephilia, rationed

 | Survey |

  BY Jai Arjun Singh

Qissa

INDEX

a) Url/title of blog/magazine where your writing is published.
Jabberwock (http://jaiarjun.blogspot.in) as well as various publications, including Business StandardThe HinduForbes LifeOpen and The Caravan.


b) Best films (maximum 15) that you watched in 2014, but were released pre-1964.
Navrang (V Shantaram)
Safety Last! (Harold Lloyd, Fred C Newmeyer, Sam Taylor)
Fort Apache (John Ford)
Chalti ka Naam Gaadi (Satyen Bose)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges)
Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)
Steamboat Bill Jr (Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton)

These include films that I saw for the first time in 2014, as well as films that I saw in 2014 but dimly remembered from long-ago viewings.


c) Best films (maximum of 15) that you watched in 2014, but may have released elsewhere in the last three years.
Fandry (Nagraj Manjule)
Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
The Past (Asghar Farhadi)
Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost (Anup Singh)
Inside Llewyn Davis (the Coen Brothers)
Lootera (Vikramaditya Motwane)
Goliyon ki Raasleela: Raam-Leela (Sanjay Leela Bhansali)
Ugly (Anurag Kashyap)


d) Does the fact of their belonging to the past three years reveal anything in specific about contemporary cinema? Is it true that a majority of the titles on the list could only have been made in these years, and not at any other time during history?

I don't think that would be true of most of the films mentioned in the above list - but I must admit to not watching as much contemporary international cinema as I would like to. More experienced cinephiles might have better insights. (One observation: a film like Jafar Panahi's This is Not a Film would have been very difficult to make and distribute at many other times in film history.)

e) What is it that you regret about movies or cinephilia these days? What excites you about it the most?

It makes me uneasy that so many young people watch movies on tiny screens - computers, tablets, even cell-phones - and that by default the thing to be focused on in such viewings is the story, "what happens next", rather than the form or the "how" of the film. Not saying that casual viewers must get cerebral about films - we can all choose our levels of engagement - but given that films are such a popular medium that everyone feels free to be a critic, there should be at least some awareness that when one is watching, say, an old film on YouTube, one is in an important sense not seeing the film that was originally made. Key elements of the visual experience are lost (including the experience of being in a darkened hall, a magical space, with no or few distractions).

Related to this: the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) website recently made available streams of many of their restored "Cinemas of India" titles. Excellent initiative, but there was a problem with the aspect ratios of many of those prints - they had been adjusted for computer screens, and anyone with a basic visual sense could tell that the prints were unnaturally elongated in some cases. It really surprised me when some movie lovers I know (including at least one professional film critic) told me that they weren't much bothered by the aspect-ratio change.

What excites me: paradoxically, some of the developments that have been facilitated by the very gizmos I have been ranting about above. For instance, the way in which cell-phones and digital technology have made it easier for young, aspiring filmmakers (including kids who aren't even in their teens yet) to make short films, try out new things, learn through trial and error.


f) As you grow older, how has your relationship with cinema transformed?

Hard to say, but I think I have become a little more open-minded – acknowledging that there are many different ways to make a good film and that sweeping statements about what good cinema “must be” are of limited use. In my teens, when I started reading a lot of film literature, I was obsessed with the idea that film is mainly a visual medium, that things like framing and shot composition are the most vital elements in a good film. I haven’t completely changed my mind about that, of course, but I have become more receptive to films that are driven more by dialogue and acting than by technique (or what we usually mean by “technique”).

I also have a better appreciation of the language of popular Hindi cinema than I did even six or seven years ago, and an appreciation of the special vitalities of well-made Hindi movies from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Finally, I am no longer so hung up on the idea that a film should be consistently excellent from beginning to end; I have more time now for brilliant scenes or “moments” within a generally uneven or even mediocre film.

And I am unashamed to admit that quite often, instead of watching a favourite old film from start to finish, I watch just a few favourite scenes that I find stimulating. (Perhaps this is a natural process as one grows older and becomes more conscious of how short life is!)


g) What is your hope for your national cinema in the coming years?

Better synthesis of form and content. At least some high-quality films that continue to be influenced by or rooted in traditional India forms of storytelling (while being influenced by and having a conversation with foreign cinemas). More recognition of the many complexities of a country that is made up of so many different cultures.

h) What is your greatest discovery or recollection as a cinephile this year - a director, a film, an image, a passage?

Way too many to name, but here is one passage from Spike Jonze’s futuristic Her. The scene where Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), who is in a strange romance with his operating system Samantha, agrees to an arrangement where a real-world woman will fill in as the operating system’s “body” so that Theodore and Samantha can make physical love. If this strange ménage-a-trois is to work, it is important that Theodore doesn’t address the human woman, Isabella, as she really is; she must remain a passive medium. He temporarily forgets this though. When Isabella arrives at his door, he reflexively starts talking to her, introducing himself, and the look she gives him is that of a deer caught in a firestorm. For a few seconds – before he remembers to give Isabella the apparatus that will enable Samantha to “plug in” – here are two flesh-and-blood people who have no idea how to deal with each other directly because there isn’t a machine between them, shepherding the encounter. The scene made me think of other human-facilitator-human relationships of the present day: e.g. the gap between chatty, over-familiar interactions on a social-media page (between people who might not know each other in the “real” world) and the more tentative conversations that occur if those same people run into each other offline – naked, so to speak, without their devices. It is a reminder that technology is now altering our lives and behaviour more rapidly than ever before.