Cinema could be spoken of as a manipulative representation of real life on a reel. The two important elements of manipulation and reality evidently seem to be in conflict. But then cinema essentially encompasses both of them.
The real element –
Movies have been a mirror of the society and the world. They have exposed us to the world around us. The changes in the world are, to quite an extent, reflected in the movies.
They have helped us in forming opinions. They have to their credit much contribution in the evolution of cultures.
Portraying reality becomes essential for the viewer to relate to the movie. The film might be wishful or realistic, but the background essentially comprises of places, people, things and emotions experienced in everyday life.
The manipulation element –
If we place the camera and let it record the events, then what we get would be more appropriately described as a recording. The movie is made of scenes, which consist of sequences. The sequence, in turn, is an array of shots, taken from various camera angles and positions. So the lucid continuous flow is actually a combination of discrete shots – the illusion having been created by observing continuity. This manipulation is responsible for the visual appeal of a film.
The movie covers a span of days, weeks, or even years and generations, but length of any film is a maximum of 3 hours. Remember ‘Gone with the wind’, ‘Ben Hur’ or ‘Deewar’, which are sagas of a lifetime. This manipulation of the condensing of time forms one of the core elements of film-making.
In life, we never hear the beating of drums or flutes in the air to coincide with our happy state, or any sad music to describe our blues. But the movie has a background score to it, which echoes the ongoing emotion. This manipulation is at work in sensitizing the viewer and internalizing the sentiment within him.
There are various other additional manipulative effects used to create emphasis or dimensions. Remember Salman smashing Sonu Sood’s skull with his hands in Dabang, in red colour, or Neo (Keanu Reeves) sending all the agents of Oracle toppling with a single blow of his hand in slow motion. A highly dynamic action was given an effect for the audience to have time to appreciate it. And sure, no one minded the slow motion. In fact, the bollywood people loved it so much that they copied it into their movies. Another often used effect is ‘black and white’ for showing the past in several movies, even though the world is never black and white.
But these are mainly the manipulations in technique which are justified by cinematic conventions which even a layman knows after years of watching movies, and hence no objection is raised in his mind.
The conflict –
However, there occur situations when both these elements of reality and manipulation stand face to face, none of them ready to easily give in.
Only the essential things or random nature of things – The world is random. May be the randomness is a part of God’s bigger schemes like destinies, but to us, it’s totally random and spontaneous. If we sit in a blue line bus, the FM could be playing ‘Munni badnaam hui’ or ‘Dil jalta hai to jalne de’ without depending upon your mood or interest. While walking on a road, you might encounter a thief being chased by a crowd, and who knows, the thief fires a bullet and it hits you leaving you dead on the spot. But in a movie, things need to be pieced together to form a tale without any distractions for the viewers to be engrossed. However, many directors do take care to include this randomness treating it as a must for creating the life-like semblance. Not everything needs to be symbolic. Yet things could be pitched together with help of a small narration or effects to suggest some sort of symbolism.
Keeping it crisp or letting it be organic growth – The hero’s friend might be required in a scene just to let out the emotions of hero. However, if the friend meets him, they would first ask each others’ well-being, probably have tea, and then the hero would narrate his broodings. If we leave out all of it, and keep just the main thing, it might look very superfluous, and steal what is called as ‘organic growth of an idea’. It might look like ‘throwing away information’. Another disadvantage which might prop up is the breakage of scenes quite before the audience could feel a part of any of it. This is something which I realized through getting irritated by a sense of mood discontinuity while watching ‘Don’ (of course the new one). On the other hand, including all of it would dilute the scene and take away the keen sight of the audience. Two best examples of dealing with it that spring into my mind are the scene from ‘band baaja baraat’ where the hero’s close friend comes to him; realizes on seeing his mellowed face that something is wrong, and asks him about it, and the scene in ‘The Last Lear’ where Amitabh Bachchan approaches Arjun Rampal to ask him for the permission of doing a stunt scene himself. We catch the action halfway on a neutral shot giving the notion that already much has been said, and now they are talking on the main point.
Cliched or seemingly confused character shades – Every person has his virtues and faults. The ‘halo effect’ by which people group together certainly qualities, and imply another on seeing one of them, has been adjudged as a flaw in unbiased perception. A guy who respects his elders might still be a dishonest man. A bookworm could be a savourer of alcohol. A rich guy could be humble. A poor guy might be arrogant. Many guys from villages are rational, smart and soft-spoken. Showing the qualities not grouped together, as per halo effect, in a person might create a real character shade but which fails to draw strong sentiments of sympathy (for hero) or hatred (for villain) from the audience. Gabbar Singh, Mogambo, Geet (Jab we met) and Anil Kapoor in ‘Wo saat din’ are fine examples. However, keeping it this way might create clichéd characters which are more like paper puppets with no unique individuality of their own with all their actions and words defined, and fails to bring even a small tinge of freshness in the characters or the storyline (Reema Lagoo, Ajit, Alok Nath, the tall, lean guy with an angular face who plays inspector in almost every other old movie, hero’s friend, lately Akshay Kumar). On the other hand, be it the idiotic Scarlet from ‘Gone with the wind’ (as opposed to the ideal Melanie), John Nash in ‘A beautiful mind’, Dev in ‘DevD’, Norman in ‘Psycho’, Heathcliff in ‘Wuthering heights’, the hero being a corrupt inspector in ‘Dabang’, the greedy, materialistic yet affectionate brother Shahid plays in ‘Kaminey’ and the most recent – intelligent, smart protagonist who is so mean with his friend - Mark Zukerberg in ‘Social network’, there are several examples of characters breaking from stereotypes and becoming immortal on basis of their confused but true nature.
Only one or the various facets of life - Every person has various facets of his life. Happiness and sadness come in packages. A love-bitten heroine might have a friend sulking with her, or a brother troubled with his life and seeking support, or parents who love her a lot and spend time asking her about herself. Now, including all the facets might again snatch the tautness of the main thread. However, including everything would create a wonderful life-like semblance and a sense of depth in the situation. Wonderful examples are ‘A single man’, ‘Joggers park’ and ‘American Beauty’ which have woven the thread so neatly through all the facets that you feel to be a part of it.
The binding narrative or life and its strange ways – Neither all learning comes walking on a single road, nor a road gives only a single learning. Generally a movie’s major purpose is to induce into the audience one central idea. Dev realizes that he should be saner than that. Tees Maar Khan proves himself suitable for his acronym by looting the train and escaping, which anyone would have guessed from the very beginning. 3 idiots well suggest the pursuit of excellence instead of running after success. ‘Border’ tells the story of gallant soldiers fighting on border. In life, so many different realizations dawn on us any time, and that too after a series of this or that. Keeping one straight binding idea gels easily with the audience, since they have nothing to worry their minds with thinking. A new idea, when spoon-fed, sells. However, it might take away the possibility of twists, subtle conflicts and a true probing into the situation. An egregious example is ‘Into the wild’, where the binding force is not one dawning conclusion, rather the protagonist’s conflict, which grows into an organic manner so beautiful, that by the end of the movie, the conflict has transpired into you forcing you to think over it real hard. It stirs a hornet’s nest in your mind whether or not to be in this society. Some other such movies are ‘A beautiful mind’ which shows the surge for intelligence, the unfailing love of a wife and undying support of friends altogether in a frame which could well adorn the wall of your living-room. ‘Confessions of a dangerous mind’ is painted black and sinewy with the constant new revelations of the life of a television guy. ‘Saving Private Ryan’ projects itself to be true to the core by showing the exhaustive set of emotions of soldiers - those of fear, loneliness, their feelings of feeling futile in risking their lives to save one man, their inspiration and their courage, the binding force being the expedition itself undertaken to save private Ryan. ‘Offside’ by Jafar Panahi propagates the idea of women being discriminated, but doesn’t overlook any of the ideas encountered in the way like the security guard’s (a common man) unorthodox attitude, but having to stop the women from viewing the football match on the pretext of his duty, and his pitiable life.
A well-planned blend of both the elements surely makes for a great movie.
Good luck viewing.
