In an age of complex and intelligent cinema, audiences have now started to crave for those simple storylines that once flooded the screens. Now when the world and our very own lives have gotten so complex, it’s beyond our control. It’s a refreshing feel to just go and sit in a cinema and get carried away to another land with no complexities. However, it seems that the makers of Indian cinema are doing just the opposite of this! Every maker out there is trying to make their next venture as complex, or even more, than their last.
When you have a life that is rushed and when you are constantly faced with tragic images in front of newspapers and on current affair shows, it is then you realize the need for an escape on regular intervals.
For the movie buffs it’s the nearest cinema halls or the television room in their houses. It’s that one place of escape where you want to be carried away by the magic on celluloid. Or simply get lost in the world of cinema without having to worry about never-ending dilemmas in life.
Although this escape may seem easy to find, but believe it or not, it’s becoming more and more rare. Today makers prefer to keep their storylines as raw and complex as our lives. No escape whatsoever. It’s as if you sit down in front of the television or cinema and watch the dilemmas of your very own life flash past you like they never left.
Intelligent, complex, and reality cinema is appreciated by critics and to a certain extent by audiences as well. However, when every maker is trying to do the same it is no longer intelligent, complex, or real. It simply turns into another trend or strategy to get the critics on your side and hopefully take an award or two at the end of the year.
There was a time when Indian movies were best known for its simple and patriotically rooted movies but today if you had to sum up the latest trend in Indian cinema it would have to be “movies about cheating wives or husbands” or a “story line that can only be understood by a certain group of people in a society“. Mass pleasing or “masala’ movies are no longer existent.
If one wonders why movies from makers such as David Dhawan, Priyadarshan and Sooraj Barajatya are so popular then they only have to study the latest trend of Indian cinema to understand.
David Dhawan sticks to what he does best and that is filling a cinema hall with roars of laughter. Priydarshan also joins this same genre and these two makers would certainly have the most consistent number of hits at the box office.
Sooraj Barajatya on the other hand still stays solidly in the hearts of every movie buff. His movies are the ultimate escape route from the world. They are the ultimate dream cinema that takes you away into a beautiful world. One where things are simple, non-complex, and happy. Indeed the very reason why a simple movie such as Vivah stayed strong in cinemas for over 27 weeks.
Some may argue that the shear simplicity in the story line and na
