Real on Reel

I generally get into debates about movies. The conversation travels all aspects of movies right from the strength of the story to direction, acting, editing music and whatnots. The most interesting of the points that comes across, especially with new Hindi movies is the realism of the movies. How real the movie is? How well it portrays the ‘actual’ situation! Etc. Etc. Now the fun thing is, the better the movie scores in the public reality meter, the better they say the movie is.

Why do I say that this is funny? Very simply put, because people do not know what real is, but a perception of reality exists in their mind. And if the movie is fitting in that imaginary framework of reality, people want to claim that it is a realistic movie.

This might sound like a high handed irresponsible comment, for apparently I am indicting a whole group and accusing them of not knowing much. So, for putting the record straight let me confess – I do not claim to know a lot either. I do not know what the reality might be, but I know for sure what it is not.

Take Page3 for example. It is oft quoted as the best real movie of the recent times. Almost everyone is gaga over how elegantly the movie brings out the reality behind the glamour and the riches. I am inclined to agree that it is a nice movie, but I am not ready to accept that it portrays the ‘reality’. The reason why people want to believe that it is real is this – we live honest lives, earn a decent salary and in general are well to do. But we are not filmstars, or business magnates; we do not have sea view penthouses in Mumbai, we do not drive around in expensive cars. Thus, we want to believe that the people who are able to do this have to be dishonest- otherwise they’ll just be common people like we are. Concluding, our view of the ‘reality’ of the filthy rich comprises dishonesty, lecherousness, lack of character and saleable morals. We expect dirt, we WANT their lives to be ugly in a clandestine way, we wish they’d have broken families and paedophilic tendencies; we want to know that they do not sleep peacefully every night. Happiness is relative- you are happy because you have somebody who is unhappy to make comparisons with. Think about that.

The directors and the producers consciously know this tendency and hence on the box office are movies which are pseudo-real; which unashamedly fling mud on the silken robes of the rich and the famous – the people lap it up, cherishing the taste, and sleeping happily knowing that even the rich are unhappy.

Coming to the second part of my argument- why am I so sure that what I claim to be unreal is actually so? Consider a proof by contradiction. Assume all the people in power (political, financial or otherwise) are morally corrupt. Can you in any sanity explain how every system holds? As opposed to the common view that there are some honest people who make the system stick, I’d like to argue that it takes a large number of honest threads to hold the fabric together and in the process they bear the burden of some weaker threads too.

I am not blind to the fact that there ARE people who are corrupt, and that the slander stories might be true to a large extent; but they do not represent a majority. We still live in a largely honest society. (A cynical explanation to that is that it takes a lot of courage to be morally dishonest, but that’s another story)

The reason why I wrote this article is I want us to have a better, whiter view of the people who make money for us, people who entertain us, people who are inspirations to our children. A cynical world view does not make things any better.

You might call me a hopeless optimist; I’d prefer to be a realist.