I wondered what makes a movie a great one.

 

Having been brought up in villages and watched all kinds of mainstream films in all languages …I have been wondering to understand why there are some films said to be great and some are not…. As I grow up watching commercial mainstream films which are full of entertainment.  We rejoiced ourselves in watching the entertaining films and felt them as great irrespective of the lack of the values of art or aesthetic sensibilities. When I enrolled myself in post graduation in English literature, I started studying the Shakespeare’s classics, Charles dickens and Thomas Hardy. I felt that these classic writers equally blended both entertaining and artistic values to tell the stories. I didn’t understand the timelessness of the classics at that time, and I didn’t think of applying the same to the films. After my post graduation, I came to Bangalore where I used to attend weekend workshops and seminars conducted by suchitra film society in Bangalore.  I started watching classic films, yet I couldn’t understand the greatness of them. I asked the dignitaries the same question what I felt “what’s great in them, they are completely boring and what makes them great, I feel commercial films are greater than these films” I questioned with all the truthfulness, everyone gazed at me like a castaway or creature from another planet. Much to my surprise, dignitaries asked me to sit down without giving the answer. I really felt ashamed at asking the question, especially at their snobbish look. I came out of the theatre and strongly decided to know what‘s a great film. Why I am not able to appreciate the said to be classics. Then I came to Hyderabad under circumstances, I started studying film theory in British library. I started exploring aesthetic values maintained in the great films and values that the filmmakers in maintained in storytelling. I started understanding the way they portrayed the characters visually and the way they expressed the story through the cinematic form.  I came to understand that there several things do matter in considering a film as great. In my opinion, some of the important features that I observed in great films or to be considered as great films….

1.       originality

2.       Perspective of the filmmaker

3.       Imaging or the way the filmmaker visualized the story

4.       Form or the way the filmmaker presented the story

5.       Content or how depth the filmmaker has explored human intricacies or predicaments.

6.       Timelessness or finding a new meaning even after a decade

When I applied the same values to our mainstream films, I found that these films really lack all the above except the entertaining value at the cost of the story, form and other values.  Mainstream filmmakers have lot of liberty in telling stories without bothering about the values of the great films in the guise of entertaining audience. of course, there are filmmakers who have tried their level best to entertain the audience yet maintaining the above qualities in their films. They succeeded in maintain both entertaining and artistic values. The other important thing we can find in our mainstream films is clichés or stereotypic scenes or lacking originality. With this knowledge, I started appreciating great films with great respect. I just wanted to share my journey of appreciating great films.  I believe that some of our mainstream filmmakers have the ability to entertain people with all the artistic values mentioned above.