Watched Gulaal (A Hindi movie directed by Anuraag Kashyap) today. I guess it was one of those movies which faded away into obscurity except for some supposedly best critics yapping away about the realism and intensity of performances and the movie. Probably, another of those multiplex audience types. Interestingly, this movie had to wait for 3 years to hit the screens after it was ready for release. I guess the censors were waiting for Anurag's Black Friday to be shown the green signal before they could commit the same "crime" on any other of his' movies. Anyways, the movie was released, appreciated and bang the story ends there. I watched the movie today after probably 2 months of its release. I guess we, the audiences, along with the theaters/multiplexes are the real culprits for such movies' early and unfortunate demise. On one hand, the distributors want the rake in their profits ASAP and we want to have our senses fulfilled ASAP (Senses refer to popcorn munching, killing weekend time with/without a boy/girl friend). The funny part is when we crib on the type of movies being churned out. How hypocritical? Well then, the question arises what can we do? We have had our share of miseries watching supposedly good movies by "great" directors and left the halls having that feeling of being cheated. I felt that when I saw Black, Rituparno Ghosh's Last Lear are some of them. So, obviously we can feel OK, we can't feel bad on the sole weekend we manage to earn in a week.
I guess the only answer to this issue to have a board/review panel in each theater on the quality of movies. There should be one screen dedicated to the movie connoisseur. The panel will get a chance to review the movies and accordingly decide on the movies which can hit the connoisseur's screen. Thank you, Thank you, I know you will appreciate this innovative idea. After all, as AB Baby says "What an idea Sir ji".
OK then, let's come back to Gulaal. According to me, this will go down as one of the finest movies ever made. In spite of being just a few films old, Anuraag Kashyap appears to be a Principal in a movie school where some leading directors don't fit the bill of even clerks. When the theme centers around the youth, it becomes so very essential to infuse energy in each and every scene. The very sight of the young characters brings in the expectation of finding something different. Not the run of the mill formulaic love scenes, stunts, dances and happy endings. The old ones have tried, re-tried and killed the formula. All that works today is experiments with truth. It's so very easy to connect to the audience when you experiment with truths of our lives. All you need is to pepper it up with some hope and love.
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