Power of Cinema
I have seen movies.
I have been seeing movies.
They really shape me in a way.
I never knew who ’spastics’ were until I saw ‘Anjali’.
That movie told me to love them even if they were different from rest of th kids.
I never knew that there were so many divisions in our society based on caste and there were programmed discrimination based on them till i saw “Vedham Pudhidhu”. I learnt to respect people and “not see” caste in them.
I knew that there was Gandhi from my textbooks.
However his ‘ahimsa’ never made sense to me till I saw the movie and I learnt to respond to hatred and insult in the ‘kindest’ manner possible.
I have read “Veerapandiya Kattabomman” and his valour in defending the motherland and dying for it. It never made any sense. However when I saw it in the movie, I understood it.
The medium has emotionally “introduced” me to the great poet Subramanya Bharathi, the great story writer Jeyakanthan, the magnificient Bhagath Singh. It has also introduced me to the plights and travails of the poor, the dalits, women. It made me an atypical Arian.
It taught me to have great ambitions while not sacrificing good ideals (that is why I hate Maniratnam’s GURU). I know that the medium is very very powerful and can be an instrument of social change. Correction it is a medium of “SOCIAL CHANGE”.
You like it or not! Films have the ability to show life and they will. So they will have pull over people like me. I find that I am not alone.
There are millions of Indians who are fans of film stars. Not fans who simply buy ticket, enjoy the movie and then forget. Fans who get ‘entertained’ and ‘enlightened’ in the same moment. Today’s cover story of Bangalore mirror had a very touching tale of a Vishnu Vardhan fan. His name is Venkatesh and he is no more. He died in a road accident yesterday. His death is nothing sensational. However what he did before was nothing short of “sensational” and “deeply moving” for a fellow film fan like me.
There has been raging debate in south ever since Rajini’s Shivaji released as to what is the relevance of actors’ fan clubs apart from the fact that they are simply hype creators and consumers of a brand image. After what I read today in Bangalore Mirror, I can say that being a fan of an actor with a “responsible social image” is thousand and one times better than being a member of a political party or any “progressive thinkers group” in this country. The biggest reason being the channelisation of efforts by young men and women towards just social cause by film actor fans is effective and the social change effected is also permanent. And the actions by some of the fans are so self less.
There is a flip side. This phenomenon which is present only in India and more accentuated in South India puts film makers and film actors in a spot of bother. They have to sacrifice a bit of their creative freedom and be more and more “politically correct”. I mean “socially correct”. A Big actor like Rajini, Kamal or Vishnu Vardhan can ill afford to say and do things that would mislead their fans in a wrong way. It is credit to these actors that they have preserved their ‘image’ which is a burden on their personal freedom for not just the sake of ‘moolah’ in the box office, but also for the emotional well being of their millions of fans.
If you are getting curious as to what really Venkatesh did, here it goes.
Some six months back, Vishnuvardhan acts in a movie “Sirivantha” which is an honest remake of the telugu movie “Aa naluguru” starring Rajendra Prasad and Kota Sreenivasa rao. The theme of the movie is an honest man committing suicide due to a moral and financial crisis and whether his honesty is rewarded by his family and people in general with his ghost being the witness accompanied by yamdhooth. This movie became a hit in Telugu and won state government awards. This movie did not create any sensation however as Rajendra prasad was not a big star. However this movie was remade by Vishnu Vardhan in Kannada directed by S.Narayan. The movie was a flop by Vishnu’s film standards and Vishnu only had emotional comfort of having made a “movie with a soul”. The movie had a scene where the protagonist’s ghost lamenting on committing suicide by consuming poison due to which the eye donation is rendered futile.
Cutting back to yesterday, Venkatesh who is being tended to in the emergency care realises that the attempts could mean that there is little time for “eye donation” which he had pledged after seeing the movie “Sirivantha” six months earlier. So he asks the doctors to remove his cornea while he is alive so that the eye donation will go off without a hamper even while his life is all but set to extinguish. The news is communicated to Vishnu Vardhan who is in Mysore and his attempts to move Venkatesh to a better hospital in Mysore fail as Venkatesh breahtes his last, but not before donating his eyes. A Man who chose to die blind for a cause who chose to not see his relatives and friend before his last breath, but stick to a cause he became aware of thanks to his favourite hero’s commercially flop film. Now the film is not a flop thanks to this “FAN”, who proved to me that the medium is one of the best medium of mobilisation of common men for a cause.
I only wish to say that many budding film makers here who fancy making Tarentino kind of video game movies (I have revised my opinion of such movies where the style and script are doctored for cheap thrills) realise that what they have in their hand is not just a nintendo, but a great medium of social expression woth potential of impacting millions of people who are waiting for the “Call”. So get your ‘call’ and pass on the ‘message’ to your colleagues and contemporaries and start being the change.
I hope that more famous Indian actors like BigB, BigS, King Khan start acting more responsibly and act more responsible than being reckless. Coz you like it or not there are millions of impressionable ‘fans’ watching.
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
Well-written article, which again raises a lot of valid questions..! Cinema, when looked upon as an art form, has it`s own freedom. A filmmaker again has his own freedom of expression. Aren`t these things being curtailed, when an actor has to keep in mind the impression he makes upon his fans..!
So it implies thus that Big stars like Big B, Vishnuvardhan, Rajnikanth, or Kamal Hassan or SRK cannot portray a negative character or rather be shown on screen as pursuing something socially irresponsible. So there, the actor in him is lost!. He becomes just a star of mass appeal right ?
[-(
Also another aspect of this is whether we look at cinema as an art form or a business..! Today it is a tradeoff sadly. 8-| so again your arguments become valid, because the number of people who see a movie for star appeal, or these fans are the people who ultimately create business.!
I too did not like Maniratnam`s GURU, because i consider it a very weak plot, compared to his previous films, but not because he portrayed a character on screen who sacrifices ideals. Such people do exist right? :-?
and lastly socially responsible films are a must, but my question is why should it just be based on a single actor`s star appeal. Why not talk about movies which can influence the common man to good, without the influence of star actors, but by the sheer brilliance of the movie`s plot itself.?
With Best Regards,
Srijith.
Sreejith!
Good questions you have asked.
I must confess that I would have loved to be in a society where cinema is looked upon only as an art form and everyone indulged it with just the intention of self expression and not care about image, censorship etc., etc.,.
In India however, Cinema has acquired more allure and has transcended into a different medium. A Medium of social aggregation where disenchanted people network and “identify” themselves as fans. Such a following is stronger here and an actor who has acquired following is “trapped”. The disadvantage is that the artist inside him/her is curtailed. And it is true. However instead of mourning for that the actor should see how relevant his/her current status can be to himself and his fans and the society in general. Movies like Anjali, Thanmatra and My Brother nikhil have managed to do what you have mentioned by the strength of their plot alone. However to make someone go blind in deathbed to donate an eye.. I guess that can be achieved only by the charisma, star power and devout following of fans and that is what I wanted to highlight. The inherent power of cinema to influence is enhanced manifold with the presence of fans and actors with fan following. So my message is , if you feel that there is a message in you dying to find a way out, the best thing to do in this country is to find the actor, who is not just blessed with talent and craft, but also with a following as you are increasing the spread and reach of your message and that is what decides how potent your handling has been.
If you read my post, I have highlighted that the plot line, characters etc., of the movie sirivantha are derived from “aa naluguru”. However the impact sirivantha was able to achieve was not matched by Aa Naluguru and that is thanks to Vishnu vardhan’s presence.
A well written article! I dont think the overall adulation exhibited by the masses towards their heroes is a healthy sign in general. While there may be isolated instances of generosity and altruism exhibited by fans, we should not forget the bloodletting due to fan violence (for example, the feud between ajith and vijay fans in Tamil Nadu) or the money that is wasted by the fans in buying movie tickets at exorbitant rates (people were willing to pay 5000Rs for the recent Rajnikanth blockbuster) or the cynical exploitation of the fans by the movie stars for their own purposes.