My Favourites from Reel Life

I have been a movie buff for quite some time now. Movies are great media for the simple reason that while imitating life they portray larger-than-life characters and incidents. I had my awakening into moviedom somewhere in the middle of the nineties, back when Cable Television in India was ruling the roost surpassing, by far, anything that had existed until then. Before Cable TV all we had were a couple of channels (a third one emerged a bit later, I think) from the Doordarshan stable, which was and still is India’s National Broadcaster. I would imagine that the TV remote was defunct back then!

Well, with Cable TV came the only decent and dedicated movie channel on offer at that time, Star Movies. It was around that time that I became hooked onto some very good (and some bad ones, I might add) cinematic fare. Once that happened Hindi movies started to look pretty ordinary. Please don’t get me wrong, I appreciate good cinema in whatever language it is presented in, but somehow at that point in time Hindi movies were very amateurish with the least attention given to the script.

Fast forward to the present time and we are in the middle of a cinematic revolution in India, with some very original concepts, terrific technique and very good presentation. I think people in India would agree with me when I say that a large share of the credit for this revolution must be given to Laagan, a breakthrough film from every point of view.

For me, any talk of cinema is incomplete without mentioning the maestro of Bengali cinema, Satyajit Ray. You know, back when I was a kid, people close to me used to comment that his cinema, while being very thought provoking and cerebral filled with analogies and allusions. But for me, Ray remains this master story-teller who will draw you into his canvas and make you empathise while at the same time thoroughly entertaining you. For the uninitiated I would recommend Parash Pathar (The Philosopher’s Stone), the Apu Trilogy (consisting of Pather Panchali (Song Of The Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)), Kanchenjungha, Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) and the Feluda and Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne films.

To be continued…