The dreamland that is Indian Cinema

For the past several weeks I have been suffering from what I may call, for lack of a better description is a bloggers blackout. Simply put, I get ideas in my head for interesting prose, and I begin duly writing the same, but the finesse is just not there to complete the work. The picky person that I am, results in hardly anything making it past the draft stage - well until today.

Again, for the past few weeks, I have watched a few, select Hindi movies - selections of a few friends, and what I could get my hands around. Now you would ask, well what's so special about that? Ahem... from where I come from - its all about the same. To be completely honest I pretty much stayed away from those movies, an excuse always at hand when I was invited to come along, both in India and here in USA. My reason was simply this, the story lines were predictable, rich girl meets poor boy (or poor girl meets rich boy), they fall in love (some petty squabbles and histrionics are introduced before that), throw in a villain somewhere and finally the 'good guys' win - voila, end of story!
Nowadays, the new genre of film makers are exploring other themes, but the bulk of the movies are rehashes of the same old principles, only the locales are not Srinagar - but Switzerland and the heroine Aishwarya not Madhubala. But still, I had to admit, there must be some substance in them that has kept audiences coming to the big-screen for the past six to seven decades - and I decided to figure out for myself.

After watching a few (some were indeed very terrible) select titles from the mainstream genre I too started, to realize and appreciate where the sum and substance of Indian cinema came from. Here in the USA most movies potray the real world - infact they specialize in that! - As in the case of Wag the Dog - if Hollywood so chose they could quite accurately potray any 'reality' that you wanted an audience to see.
In India though, its quite the opposite. They are filled with color, with elaborate song and dance sequences - with motifs very quintessential Indian. I noticed this to a great detail while watching Swades - one of 'to watch' movies on my list. There in one of the scenes the movies come to the village - with the entire population gathering to watch the show. The movie is an old print, probably one seen by the audience multiple times... but yet they eyes are filled with enrapture. For these few hours they can leave their pathetic lives behind, their endless struggles for basic essentials, their poverty and unrelenting misery. It is in this time that they can live out their fantasies - possibly that of young boy falling in love with a pretty girl, with hearts of gay abandon and endless romance. It is in these movies that good always triumphs over evil, rising like a phoenix to overcome the seemingly impossible to emerge victorious in the end.

What it gives is something for people to hold on to, to wish for. Hope is a wonderful thing, and that is what these movies of yore try to provide.... and that is what makes it all so endearing.