Of the not so Golden Period in Tamil Cinema

For everybody:

A laid-back Saturday afternoon, watching a classic 1980s Tamil movie in KTV, munching a chocolate chip cookie… Call me old-fashioned, but seriously there is nothing like it… The old world never loses its charm, those of you who appreciate this truth will probably be able to relate to what I will be saying here in this article… The rest of y’all can quit reading, thank you!! Just kidding!

For those who stayed:

The 1980s was considered the ‘Golden Period’ of Tamil cinema, just as the 1930s and 40s were considered for Hollywood… Be it, in terms of the kind of movies that were made, the songs that were charted, or the faces that were cast… It all clicked well in sync… I still tell my dad he was enviably lucky that he had all these movies to watch and all these songs to listen to when he was young… Unlike this generation, we only get to see super-man like stereotypical heroes fighting 100 goons at one go and cute heroines well, with pretty much nothing remarkable to do… Add to that some highly unbelievable make-up and unnecessary trouble… There is a 2011 movie for you… With a formula beaten to death…

And what kind of social value do any of these movies add to society, nothing… absolutely nothing… Endhiran for example, what was your take- away from that movie? … That robots are not practical at least as of 2010?? … Well, they seriously needn’t have spent such an insane amount of money for this simple realization… I realized that robots were not practical back in 2009 with a humble budget of Rs. 5000 when my vacuum cleaning robot wouldn’t clean a modest 12 sq. ft of floor space properly… :-). The point is most filmmakers these days are just out there to make a mark and some good money… Very few filmmakers embed a social objective that would dawn upon people watching it as a learning or as a take- away or if the film is too good, even as an experience…

How beautiful would it be if watching a movie as such can be an experience?? Watching Inception was an experience of unfathomable proportions… Exploring the layers of an inside dream... Chris Nolan is a true genius… and so was watching Avatar, again an experience of unbelievable heights… Exploring the unknown of an outside world… Sorry to disappoint, but I am not talking about such fiction-based experiences, I am talking about stories that you can experience on the basis of every day realities… Compare and contrast now: 1980s movies like Samsaram Adhu Minsaram, Mouna Ragam, Poovae Poochoodava to name a few…. Each of these movies clearly had something to convey to the audience... Be it coming in terms with the dynamics of a joint family in the first or finding bliss with true and mature love in the next or being an ode to an extraordinary relationship between a grandmother and a granddaughter in the third…. In fact, 2 movies in the list never had a proper hero, the other had two superheroes and all 3 were mega-hits… What do we get now? Movies like Sura, Singam, Siruthai to scratch the surface… Be it coming in terms with God knows what in the first or God knows what in the second or God knows what in the third beyond the fact that Tamil cinema is obsessed with animal names for movies… :-) Lol, it is sad that the audience still buys this crap…

Tamil cinema has somewhat stopped being an actual-world reflection… It has become more of an escapist world, trying to make the audience refugees in it…. There is undeniably an escapist in everyone, but nobody’s escapist needs a movie canvas for baselining logic… My escapist can take much better inspiration from a fairytale storybook or a feel-good show in TLC... Mainstream cinema cannot excuse itself by winding around an escapist ideology… And the audience should not demand such a cinema if it is coming at the cost of degrading cinematic values... Seriously, most heroes get portrayed as courageous, brave souls who fight evil and most heroines find that appealing… Grow up, people, we are not in Stone Age, to find physical agility to knock out 100 goons appealing (Besides this is not Goon Country, it’s the biggest democracy in the world)… And in the 21st century; it in fact is emotional intelligence that appeals…

Tamil cinema has started showing people how it perceives them should be, rather than showing them as they would truly be in themselves… The hero is often showcased as pure gold and the villain always as pure evil… Isn’t there a grey in-between a black and a white?? There is a shade of darkness or selfishness in every good and a shade of goodness or selflessness in every evil… Perhaps Mohan, out of all 1980s heroes was often seen in characters with grey shades… The thing is Tamil cinema has started establishing conservative ground rules listing the characteristics of how a hero should be, how a villain should be, and how a heroine should be… Especially the rules it has framed for the role of a heroine is particularly degrading and limiting… The biggest danger that can incur out of such a scenario is people will knowingly or unknowingly start aping what they see on screen… If they see the role of a woman so limited on screen, they tend to allot similarly limited significance to women in real life too… And the society will slowly unlearn whatever it had learned over years of civilization… How poignant!!

I confess that I will watch any kind of movie if I want to... But I don’t come with any reservations when I watch a movie... As long as Tamil cinema has such an open audience, they don’t have to stick to formula movies to succeed economically… Thankfully, movies like Raman Thediya Seethai, Abhiyum Naanum, Mozhi are still being made ensuring that somewhere there is a social learning curve looking up and leading out…