Raja Sen
The worst film in recent times?
Why craft and style are all wonderful, but well outweighed by boredom
Posted On Wednesday, May 04, 2011 at 04:22:16 AM
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I was lecturing a group of peachy keen students at a Mumbai college last week, and happened to ask them what they thought was the worst film they'd seen recently.
This is a reminder of something we, as critics, frequently forget. That cinema despite how sublime the treatment can be and how enthralling the right background score can make a moment is really all about the story, and everything else is, in the final reckoning, just window-dressing. It's potentially phenomenal window-dressing, of course, and whole films can piggyback simply on style, but if a film fails to engage, then it has failed on the most fundamental level. And while it certainly can engage using visual and aural finesse, the basic tool for the job is the story. It seems obvious, but it's easy to forget the simplest truths when drowning in a sea of unoriginal cinema, cinema that, for the most part, sadly relies on anything but story. Most of the weakest films in the last few years, and certainly the most disappointing efforts by major filmmakers, are films that have treated the storytelling almost as incidental, while making sure they get the right cinematographer and an appropriate heroine. Or creating enough drama but drama alone does not story make. Mani Ratnam's Raavan, for example, comes tragically to mind. Ram Gopal Varma, a onetime stunner who has notoriously been rallying against the very need for story, is today making films mostly watched only by their editor while they're being cut into shape. It is no great revelation that Anurag Kashyap, current posterboy of the Indian indie cinema and a director with immense stylistic flair, has only achieved real success while masterfully adapting a true story and then an old classic. These are all directors who know what they are doing, and even in their most awkwardly fumbled attempts can we find moments of redemption. We see passion and we see skill, and even in films that squander it all, we seek salvation in gorgeous visuals, bravely written characters, stray performances and subversive lines of dialogue. Not so for the audience. The casual viewer looks at a film like I do a painting: without knowledge or care for the process or the torturous journey undertaken by the creator, but merely thumbs up or thumbs down. I don't care how elaborate the brushstrokes are and how hard it is to get that kind of a shadow effect with charcoal on canvas, but all that matters to me at the time is whether I'd like to look at it or not. And there's nothing worse than leaving an audience cold. No matter how much the critic applauds. |
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