Movie Blog

 

Cinephiles and Movies

Cinephiles have been around for decades. When cinema first started, cinephiles came along with them. It’s like when you buy one pack of chips, and get a soda for free (I know, a very weird analogy, but my brain isn’t the best of places while I am writing this bit for my article.). movies have been around for a very long time. We love them, we see glimpses of our daily lives in them. We relish them with all our being. They are a form of escape from our very real realities. What can be better than that? To be in another world… a very different, much better world than the one each one of us currently inhabits. A world where everything works out your way… a world where you are the main character, and the very fact is accepted by all who inhabit this imagined world of yours.

Truth is, this compares to not even a fraction of the real pleasure it gives us watching movies. And watching them in theatres is the best. After all, theatres have been created for that very purpose: a day off from our daily hectic lives, just to enjoy the life of a character in a form of media which is on average 90-130 minutes long, play out in front of our very eyes. Quite the dreamy life, isn’t it? The ones those characters live… their own world, where they are the stars, nobody else there to steal the limelight… and even if there is some competition, the entire situation is set up to favour the side which we all want to see winning in the end. After all, that’s how it has always worked out, right?

Well…. Not… really.

In recent times, movies have started to shift focus from depicting an absolutely optimistic picture of their reality to a more realistic-yet-positive picture of the world they have created. There isn’t the usual trope of overly positive characters, nor every situation being light. Instead, we get to witness dark and brooding moments too, moments when the main character is kicked even when he is down. Movies of today have started to make character development kind of a big deal. How is the character going to evolve in the face of the most horrible of adversities? What will be the change that we see? Is this change something which correlates to the world we see around us? That’s what makes the movie worth watching... according to me.

There are some movies where the protagonist, or sometimes the deuteragonist, undergoes his/her “villain arc”. It basically means the goody hero now wants to forsake all his principles that kept him in line, and become a man driven by desire and emotions. There are also horror films, where the main actors in question are subjected to an environment where they are constantly terrified and a dark entity/force follows them and torments them. At least that’s the general trope. There are psychological thrillers as well, which explore the similar theme of horror, but of the psychological type. The horror is present, but there is no physical manifestation of it as such; it’s all in the mind of the person experiencing it, and of course, the viewers; a.k.a us, see all this unfold, along with the physical manifestation of the psychic creature that is tormenting our protagonist. Its kind of fun, in a sense, seeing the thrill… and it’s also terrifying… the very concept of something which we can’t see and yet it torments us is a chilling one, no doubt. That’s what makes these kinds of movies great to watch; they employ the crux of their story in a beautiful way, giving justice to the film/show which has been made.

There are superhero films as well… I like them more than other genres… I mean… they are supes, who doesn’t like a human with enhanced physiology and a badass repertoire of powers? You have to be living under a rock to not like these kinds of movies. I mean… they are just pure awesome! There is a main character, the “good” one (the definition of good for a hero has changed over the year. Now it’s the man who does may/may not do good but always has good intentions behind his actions. There are other things as well, but I am no expert here. Not my department.) and there is a villain; the hero foils the villain’s plans and does traditional hero stuff. That’s all there has been to it… but there are movies based solely on the hero’s perspective too; his origin story; how he came to be the way he is, what did he face to develop this kind of personality and sense of altruism in him. Some heroes don’t have this sense of altruism… there is an ulterior motive behind their actions too, albeit not a very self-centred one. Every movie has its own perks, and something to tell. Some movies… hate to admit it, but they are a waste of time. If you keep on repeating the same tropes over and over again, people lose interest, and if you oversaturate a concept, it’s all the worse.

Its getting tougher to make good movies now-a-days. People don’t get ideas easily, and there is hellish competition in terms of ingenuity and good ideas. If somebody strikes upon an idea, either a movie has already been made on it, or it’s already being made, or it can also be that another group of people are making a similar movie based on the same idea you struck upon. It’s like a battlefield out there. You have to do something big to make an impact, or you are buried six feet under the piling competition. It’s harder to make original good movies due to a lot of them being similar in idea, so many focus on making their movies better than the ones they are getting the idea from. It has worked till now; take the latest film twisters for example. The sequel to the 1995 box office hit Twister, the movie initially got a lot of earnings, riding on the brand fame, but the movie itself is a nice one; all the elements of a disaster film are there; there is plenty of thrill and excitement watching the chasers as work, and the impact of tornadoes on peoples’ lives has been shown in a nice manner. There are other such examples as well; I won’t mention them in order to keep my blog short and within acceptable limits.

I have always been fascinated with movies; they show something which everybody wants in their lives. The fascination soon turns to an obsession; we want to be those characters in our own lives. I have thought that this is maybe due to the very good acting on behalf of the actor who plays the role. They do an awesome job at it. Personally, I like actors who can pull off the most hard of roles, like there is William Dafoe from the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, RDJ from the Iron-man trilogy and the Avengers series of films, Cillian Murphy from Peaky Blinders, Oppenheimer, 28 days later, and many other names which deserve to be mentioned, but I don’t have the mental memory to remember all those at this moment (I know. The human brain sucks.)

I would like to end on the positive note that movies are a great pastime for true cinema lovers, and the best way to watch movies is by going to a cinema hall. Trust me, nothing beats watching a movie in a cinema hall, not even watching them from the comforts of your home. I will take a cinema hall over OTT anytime and anywhere. Movies are meant to be watched in theatres, the place where there is the most immersion, and a place where movies are truly able to shine.