Recently, I watched a Bollywood movie ‘Monsoon Shootout’. The Antagonist and the protagonist it ferried were a contract killer and a police officer, respectively. Right after leaving the theatre at night at 9:30, I was just wondering why people create such type of cinema. What do they want to exhibit?
Why make such a dark movie? It was not the first time that these thoughts premiered at the already devaluing gateway of my mind. I always carry this dilemma, I always do. Later, not the first time, still as always later, I started rationalizing, is this variety of cinema needed that shows dark, the pitiless, unfeeling, brutal demeanor of life? Is that conduct at all needed? And like every time I get the answer from my own spiritual cosmos -Yes! We need these perspectives of cinema and literature open and accessible to the audience.
If you are a movie buff, you must be employing a lot of time following the cinema. The more time you give to these entertainment items, the less you find to explore readable media like books, magazines, and newspapers. Unquestionably, if you are an enlightened human being, you should keep yourself aware of what is going in the external realm and truly what this world is? How it operates, how it transforms the face.
If you are donating a lot of time watching movies and can’t help it, then, you better watch every type of cinema. Don’t just look out for ever-pleasant material like a teenage romance-comedy or an eyeful, ever pleasing, big canvass Switzerland excursion with lovely songs or an ever-green, ever-popular burlesque. Give equal importance and value to something which brings tears to your eyes, which empties you out, which fatigues you and sometimes which even bores you. Bend your knees in front of Oliver Stones’s, Anurag Kashyap’s as well when harboring James Cameron’s and Karan Johar’s.
Don’t perpetually crave for pride, joy, and triumph, sometimes strive for turmoil and grief. Do get paranoid. Do feel hunger. Do relinquish. Try to, at least, implicitly live those flashes, when you perceive someone portraying those unpleasant moments on the big screen.
You will actualize the value of your life, you will find how beautiful it is and how you can make it even better if you keep it innocent if you believe you are amplest at what you already have and not in something you don’t.
Coming back to the review around dark movies, if we talk about Bollywood, I don’t know which was the first Hindi dark movie. Dark cinema basically deals with complex topics like sex, violence, lust, greed and their impact on life. It had been in the recent past only and not a very long time ago. Dark movie production has germinated a movement in Indian cinema for the last 10–12 years. Undoubtedly, MR Anurag Kashyap has been the scout of this domain. Rising with his never-released ‘Paanch’ and up to violent, disturbing ‘Raman Raghav’, Kashyap has been excellent and to the point. His cinema remarkably disturbs and trust me it shakes you a lot. But as I stated previously this is what we as humans should be conscious of. This is what we should identify that there do such components breath in the world. Sometimes very near us.
Kashyap brings up the truth as it is materially and emotionally present in society. His cinema is so real and notably grievous that sometimes I even want to dodge his movies. I heartily believe that before him there were filmmakers who produced dark cinema but they never could or perhaps deliberately did not present ugliness and the disturbing reality of human actuality in such a pellucid manner. Kashyap’s cinema troubles you a lot and it disturbs you to the extent when you want to cry and even want to criticize him for creating such a universe of art.