I am not a fan of Bollywood movies, for most of those don’t tell good stories; they just brand actors. That is probably the reason why production houses spend so much on promotions. There is nothing wrong with that. A majority of Indian movie watchers don’t step into the cinema halls to fry their brains on some twisted storyline; it's more often a hangout, an escape from the already tensed everyday life.
This is a reason why, generation after generation, people fall for fairy tales; everyone feels out of the world for some moments. A lie, so blissful that we find it hard to leave behind unless we run a risk of being a laughing stock. All this would prove to us why fancy is the food of cinema, a motion picture of the daily life of the common man would fancy no one.
But my complaint today is not about viewers but filmmakers. It's easy to cash in on popular stars. Easier to get some cars blown and hired fighters beaten up. But all these are Pabulum. Your visitors will like the dish, but they won’t cherish the taste. Here, I don’t ask you for cryptic plots and esoteric sciences. But could we give our viewers a soul-touching glimpse of life?
I would have sounded contradictory in the last line; on the one hand, we know our audience wants to escape the miseries of life, and on the other, I am urging for a glimpse of ordinary life. So let me clear the air. All our lives are extraordinary; we just miss out on the good things in the run. So what if someone stood by our side and relived those moments with us? The Idea of fairyland is still in our minds, we have buried it under our mundane life. We know there is no perfect love story. But that does not stop us from expecting a perfect one for us.
So if I confused you enough, let me leave with these final lines. I want films to touch upon the daily joys of humane life, to keep inspiring people for a living every day beautifully, so that we don’t have to bury our films (those one-man army, those eternal love over million births or superhuman) like we had to do with our fairy tales. So that we could live a movie in our lives.