Cinema – Food for Thought
iView Author:
Ritu Singh
(Jaipur, India)
EMAIL:
ritusinghrathore [at] hotmail.com
Cinema – Food for Thought
I love cinema. Cant say I grew up watching movies and loving them but eventually as I grew older, cinema liberated the voyeur in me. For me it is living someone else’s life from a distance. The feeling of ‘this could happen to me’!, it’s the travel, the spaces, the clothes, the people, the lives and how they all come together.
I am an avid movie watcher but I do so in the confines of my own space. Technology gives us fantastic surround
sound and very large screens within the comfort of our homes and saves me the discomfort of mediocrity.
The joy of watching films with like-minded people in a comfortable environment is unparalleled. Not to forget, the post
viewing reviews….apart from tremendously increasing my adjective vocabulary, it helps me understand my friends better. Cinema-for me, is ‘food for thought’ and very understandably, one man’s meat is another’s poison.
So this is how I look at it- in India, everyone eats dal, chawal, subzi,roti….this is the staple diet. Maybe a little extra spice one time, sour the next but basically it remains the same.
Similarly, everyone watches the regular, run of the mill bollywood cinema- some songs, raunchy dances, action and of course over the top dramatization. It goes down well. And why not, we all like our dal, chawal, subzi, roti. So don’t go on trashing the
KJs and YRFs- that is staple diet for so many people. And then there are those who like to try the same stable diet but with a twist. May be stir fried vegetables and a mix of two dals, staple yet ‘hatke’ but definitely not for everyone so you get a filtered audience. And in this way you keep climbing the food ladder and eventually will only have select few for a very very special and different meal because there are only so many people with enhanced taste buds and mind-set to digest that kind of cinema.
In this manner, it becomes easier for me to understand people. By knowing the movies they have really enjoyed or maybe not enjoyed, I know where they stand on the food ladder. Then of course, there is acquired taste. The first time I saw Clockwork Orange, it flew right over my head. Subsequently, a few years down the line, I had the opportunity to see it again and it blew my mind. To think that someone can actually visualize a story like that- same story, ordinary story but to see it in that light-that’s acquired taste and its definitely not for everyone!
Enough said about the viewers, time to dissect the makers. It goes without saying that whoever has ever made a film has done so with complete conviction and faith in the project. No matter how good or bad, the intent is obviously to put across a vision to entertain people, and what is cinema if not entertainment? What sets them apart is the vision! To be able to visualize Clockwork Orange, actually see it in his head and put it on celluloid, that’s what makes one chef world famous and the other reduced to
a rasoiya?
I love cinema. it gives me a better understanding of life.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“And in this way you keep climbing the food ladder and eventually will only have select few for a very very special and different meal because there are only so many people with enhanced taste buds and mind-set to digest that kind of cinema”
Hit the nail on the head. Hear hear.
“conviction and faith in the project” reminds me of one thing….
when a film is made on ‘A’ indivisual’s conviction however bad it is it will appeal to the audience… but the confusion starts when the producers start interfearing….
so i guess all the producers should start trusting their directors hand have full faith in them ….
@Ritu,
nice analogy between food and films!
There are indeed people who are very happy in eating fixed items day in day out and then there are people who always need lot of variety in their food and in the next time meal a changed menu for sure.
and there is need of suppliers who could supply that items of food to people. These suppliers are film makers in the area of films.
Last one is good, one’s vision makes him world famous chef and others no vision status keeps him limited to rasoiya.
i enjoy both.
Cinema and Food is an amalgamation which should be offered as 1 service to the patronage visiting the cinema to watch a movie…. Mind stipulant helps the viewer to get engrossed in a movie when he/she starts to feel the gist of the character that the actor potrays while food plays an intergal part where the patron treats his taste buds to be genre of the movie…. Cinemas today offer movie based concessions to suit the genre of the movie…A good film is when the price of the food, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it