FOR THOSE WHO EXPECT AN OUTRIGHT CRITICISM OF THE FILMS TODAY AND JUST TO HAVE A LAUGH AND HAVE FUN READING, there is enough of this outside so please close this window and try some other blog. This is a somewhat serious one and is my deep-rooted feelings that have recently sprung up to an insurmountable amount and mainly i want people in the industry to read and understand how the viewers feel and im writing this as one of the viewers who has somewhat a little understanding about films.
This is the first time im sharing my views out on public and i know that i might be a little too rude in the way i express my views but all im doing is to make people in KOLLYWOOD [ Tamil Film Industry], or just the whole of Indian films, understand a few things and make it better so that we all have a pleasant experience of watching movies and not just enduring the whole two and half hours waiting for something good to pop up or just watching them just to come back home n post "How shitty the movie was". This is a sincere piece of advice not just to directors or writers but even to producers and actors who can change the course of a movie. So i will just vomit what i have been feeling for the past 2 or 3 years especially since my ambitions in film making have started to show up in a very wild way and after all these movies i was made to watch in my film institute [ I really loved em BTW] n all the other language films iv watched started to make an impact on me and make me understand about what really is wrong with the films of today and that just criticizing them is not enough to make it better but to tell them what went wrong and maybe a few suggestions about how to rectify them.
THE BASIC PROBLEM:
1. NEW IDEAS:
The major problem that the average viewer understands from today's films is that we basically lack ideas or that is how it seems to the average viewer out here but this is not actually the case. We have a lot of people with fresh and new ideas or new ways to present their ideas out there but the problem is that they are afraid to execute them. The writers and directors are afraid that they might fail themselves and the producers that they might lose a lotta money and their careers too while they are at it, but what they fail to understand is the basics that they learnt at the start of the career, " BE SATISFIED WITH YOURSELF 1st BEFORE TRYING TO SATISFY OTHERS". Be it the producer who puts in money or the average viewer who watches it. Unless you as a writer or director or a film maker is satisfied with what you created yourself no one else will be. And if incase you are satisfied with something new please be confident about it and dont worry if the people will accept it or understand it, Please give us more credit than what u give right now. And even if we dont understand we will most definitely try to and if you guys arent ready to give us something new who else can? Not everyone can go n watch all these films from other languages and educate themselves and as cinema became commercial we forget one thing as to why cinema was ever invented. It was done so to educate people and as it became an entertainment the education part of it was completely left out. Even if we watch a film for entertainment we learn a lot from it. For example i knew right after the climax of DEVAR MAGAN, how bad violence really is and the poor state of some rural parts of our country. It also says a lot about caste, creed, leaders etc. Sorry for cutting the example short but i have a lot to say and i can talk about just this film for days :P. But yes we have forgotten this. So please try to satisfy yourselves when you write n don just think about the people or the producer at first [ Although they are crucial elements to be thought about later].
2.PLAUSIBILITY or BELIEVABLITY:
The main element we have been lacking since the dawn of cinema in India is this. Plausibility or believablity may also be called LOGIC in easy terms. The logic as to how one man can be alive after bein shot and falling into the sea or one man killin 100 armed men with bare hands. Im not saying these things are impossible tasks but there has to be a reason as to why it can be done and why the hero cant just take the pistol that the thugs drop n shoot em in seconds but prefer to kill all of em bare-handed. Please have a valuable reason for it rather than just saying that the average viewer likes to watch lengthy fights, because even though it may be very nice to watch try being in the position of the character as what the character wants is to end the fight soon n go rest, unless he is a psychopath who loves fighting n killing. For example if we take THUPPAKI there is a clear explanation as to how he can kill armed thugs and he clearly takes a fallen pistol n shoots. He is a Defense Intelligence Agent [DIA] and is trained for a very long time to kill people. We may believe that the logic defying things can be coped up with better graphics and good visuals but we fail to understand that the story and characters are the backbone of a film and not just visuals, if we wanted visuals we could just check out paintings and photographs rather.
3. REALITY or PLAUSIBILITY IN LIFE:
This plausibility doesnt just apply to the action sequences but also to the actions of a character and the relationships. This is a problem which developed recently and is the major cause of youngsters and other people disliking most of the recent tamil or any indian film for that matter. As to why we feel that the comedy element is getting too annoying these days, this is why. As to why we still feel Goundamani as a maestro in comedy in tamil films or as to why Sir Charles Chaplin is considered the god of comedy is this. Goundamani had believable relationships with the other characters in the movie. Even though he would relentlessly shout at every other character he is still human and still emotes and feels bad and makes us believe that he really does feel bad if anything happened to the people he shared an intimate relationship with n is not faking it. For example in CHINNA GOUNDER the scene where he gives up being a dhobi or when he talks in the "panchaayat" when Manorama is about to drink poison. This is something that we completely lack today. Just because its a comedy movie it doesnt mean everyone in the movie are inhuman people who are clowns made only to entertain people. This is the major reason why people started to hate "Vadivelu" which led to his downfall. But he really did have many plausible n real relationships in the movies which he did before. Vivek is someone who till date follows this, thts why i loved him in sivaji and even singham, but i guess he is getting too familiar with his jokes. Personally i love Santhaanam too and i really think he has the potential to be a great actor n not just a comedian but i really think he lacks this real relationships and also his jokes are getting really familiar. This might be because he is doing a tad extra films, but yeah he is approaching his downfall even though he is at the peak of his career and earning even more than many Lead actors today. For Example we all saw MYNA or KUMKI and im sure everyone enjoyed the comedy track in the movie. If we take KUMKI yes Thambi Ramaiyya was repeatedly harassed inhumanly and tortured by Vikram Prabhu but there were scenes which showcased the intimate relationship and the love between them. The "mama marumagan" bond was very strongly portrayed and thus well acclaimed. But lets not forget that this is to writers and not actors. Writers please make real relationships. Even very good writers like Rajesh fail in this. Its not just enough to make the love relationship real but all other relationships like mother, brother, sister and especially friends. No one would put up with a friend lik the lead actor in OKOK. Even SMS was kinda unreal wen we talk about the relationship between Santhaanam n jeeva but it was a little understandable and bearable but later on it was jus chaos waiting to happen. So please carefully write other characters too as the movie just doesnt star only one person but a lot of people.
4. ACTORS and DIRECTORS:
Im not gonna talk about how to make films or how to act as we have a lot of people who are amazingly talented at this and also that i have completely no clue about it. But you have a huge role to play here. Please read the story and about the character in-depth and question the writer as being a writer is a very difficult job and a very lonely one too. So when you think there is something missing please share your thoughts collaborate and come out with a great story with great characters. And please difference of opinions is not an excuse to fight. It is something that we think about cos none of us are always right. If we are we arent human and this is the secondary problem with todays main characters.
5. PERFECTION:
They are too perfect. No one likes someone who is too perfect in reality. For example in ANNIYAN we all loved ambi watching him from the perspective of god or an invisible human stalker. But as the perfect citizen he was hated all round. Im just saying PERFECT CITIZEN here n not the perfect person. N movies that we really like are the ones where we connect to the characters and their flaws. this explains why we loved Praksh Raj and Jayam Ravi and all the characters in Santosh Subbramaniam. Im sure a lot of the average viewers out there would have seen it 5 to 6 times. And yes there are a lot of movies like that and i just vommitted what came to my mind first. So please make flaws and make characters believable. Flaws are the only way through which we as an audience connect with the characters.
6. Lastly something to the PRODUCERS and ACTORS without whom movies will not happen:
Please try and give chances atleast once in a while to fresh ideas out there. If u like a new idea given by an amateur guy or the way he presented it please don shy away from it thinking if he could helm the task or not or worrying whether people would accept it or just going by returns. If u like it n its an amateur guy maybe have a well experienced and seasoned director looking over and supervising the project. If that person is a popular and well known director do not worry about how we the audience will take it as we might have different expectations not just from directors or but also from actors or even if we might understand wat the film actually conveys or not. As i said earlier please give us some more credit than what u give us now. I know its a huge thing that im asking you to blindly trust a hoard of people who might just lead the country to its destruction, but yes im asking you guys to take a leap of faith. I believe in this quote from the declaration of correspondence of the united states which says "The people who have the ability to act on something also have the responsibility to do so". And actors please break free from the clutches of wat people expect of you and try out new things. You are actors for heaven's sake, which means u can act as whomever you want and be whomever you want and not just the typical perfect "SUPER"heroes nowadays or the typical "Glam doll" heroines. I know u can do a lot more than this but please just try different things without worrying how your so called "FANS" would take it.
PS: I hope this changes the perspective a atleast a few people who read it, mainly the ones working in the industry, even though its a really boring, long article without any fun pictures, and therefore brings about watever little change in the way films are made today. I sincerely apologize for the negative remarks iv said about certain people above but i believe that negative things leave room for people to grow and become better.
Thank you for reading!!! :)
An avid lover of Cinema and an aspiring film maker.
Madhuresh Prasanna Venugopalan.
This is the first time im sharing my views out on public and i know that i might be a little too rude in the way i express my views but all im doing is to make people in KOLLYWOOD [ Tamil Film Industry], or just the whole of Indian films, understand a few things and make it better so that we all have a pleasant experience of watching movies and not just enduring the whole two and half hours waiting for something good to pop up or just watching them just to come back home n post "How shitty the movie was". This is a sincere piece of advice not just to directors or writers but even to producers and actors who can change the course of a movie. So i will just vomit what i have been feeling for the past 2 or 3 years especially since my ambitions in film making have started to show up in a very wild way and after all these movies i was made to watch in my film institute [ I really loved em BTW] n all the other language films iv watched started to make an impact on me and make me understand about what really is wrong with the films of today and that just criticizing them is not enough to make it better but to tell them what went wrong and maybe a few suggestions about how to rectify them.
THE BASIC PROBLEM:
1. NEW IDEAS:
The major problem that the average viewer understands from today's films is that we basically lack ideas or that is how it seems to the average viewer out here but this is not actually the case. We have a lot of people with fresh and new ideas or new ways to present their ideas out there but the problem is that they are afraid to execute them. The writers and directors are afraid that they might fail themselves and the producers that they might lose a lotta money and their careers too while they are at it, but what they fail to understand is the basics that they learnt at the start of the career, " BE SATISFIED WITH YOURSELF 1st BEFORE TRYING TO SATISFY OTHERS". Be it the producer who puts in money or the average viewer who watches it. Unless you as a writer or director or a film maker is satisfied with what you created yourself no one else will be. And if incase you are satisfied with something new please be confident about it and dont worry if the people will accept it or understand it, Please give us more credit than what u give right now. And even if we dont understand we will most definitely try to and if you guys arent ready to give us something new who else can? Not everyone can go n watch all these films from other languages and educate themselves and as cinema became commercial we forget one thing as to why cinema was ever invented. It was done so to educate people and as it became an entertainment the education part of it was completely left out. Even if we watch a film for entertainment we learn a lot from it. For example i knew right after the climax of DEVAR MAGAN, how bad violence really is and the poor state of some rural parts of our country. It also says a lot about caste, creed, leaders etc. Sorry for cutting the example short but i have a lot to say and i can talk about just this film for days :P. But yes we have forgotten this. So please try to satisfy yourselves when you write n don just think about the people or the producer at first [ Although they are crucial elements to be thought about later].
2.PLAUSIBILITY or BELIEVABLITY:
The main element we have been lacking since the dawn of cinema in India is this. Plausibility or believablity may also be called LOGIC in easy terms. The logic as to how one man can be alive after bein shot and falling into the sea or one man killin 100 armed men with bare hands. Im not saying these things are impossible tasks but there has to be a reason as to why it can be done and why the hero cant just take the pistol that the thugs drop n shoot em in seconds but prefer to kill all of em bare-handed. Please have a valuable reason for it rather than just saying that the average viewer likes to watch lengthy fights, because even though it may be very nice to watch try being in the position of the character as what the character wants is to end the fight soon n go rest, unless he is a psychopath who loves fighting n killing. For example if we take THUPPAKI there is a clear explanation as to how he can kill armed thugs and he clearly takes a fallen pistol n shoots. He is a Defense Intelligence Agent [DIA] and is trained for a very long time to kill people. We may believe that the logic defying things can be coped up with better graphics and good visuals but we fail to understand that the story and characters are the backbone of a film and not just visuals, if we wanted visuals we could just check out paintings and photographs rather.
3. REALITY or PLAUSIBILITY IN LIFE:
This plausibility doesnt just apply to the action sequences but also to the actions of a character and the relationships. This is a problem which developed recently and is the major cause of youngsters and other people disliking most of the recent tamil or any indian film for that matter. As to why we feel that the comedy element is getting too annoying these days, this is why. As to why we still feel Goundamani as a maestro in comedy in tamil films or as to why Sir Charles Chaplin is considered the god of comedy is this. Goundamani had believable relationships with the other characters in the movie. Even though he would relentlessly shout at every other character he is still human and still emotes and feels bad and makes us believe that he really does feel bad if anything happened to the people he shared an intimate relationship with n is not faking it. For example in CHINNA GOUNDER the scene where he gives up being a dhobi or when he talks in the "panchaayat" when Manorama is about to drink poison. This is something that we completely lack today. Just because its a comedy movie it doesnt mean everyone in the movie are inhuman people who are clowns made only to entertain people. This is the major reason why people started to hate "Vadivelu" which led to his downfall. But he really did have many plausible n real relationships in the movies which he did before. Vivek is someone who till date follows this, thts why i loved him in sivaji and even singham, but i guess he is getting too familiar with his jokes. Personally i love Santhaanam too and i really think he has the potential to be a great actor n not just a comedian but i really think he lacks this real relationships and also his jokes are getting really familiar. This might be because he is doing a tad extra films, but yeah he is approaching his downfall even though he is at the peak of his career and earning even more than many Lead actors today. For Example we all saw MYNA or KUMKI and im sure everyone enjoyed the comedy track in the movie. If we take KUMKI yes Thambi Ramaiyya was repeatedly harassed inhumanly and tortured by Vikram Prabhu but there were scenes which showcased the intimate relationship and the love between them. The "mama marumagan" bond was very strongly portrayed and thus well acclaimed. But lets not forget that this is to writers and not actors. Writers please make real relationships. Even very good writers like Rajesh fail in this. Its not just enough to make the love relationship real but all other relationships like mother, brother, sister and especially friends. No one would put up with a friend lik the lead actor in OKOK. Even SMS was kinda unreal wen we talk about the relationship between Santhaanam n jeeva but it was a little understandable and bearable but later on it was jus chaos waiting to happen. So please carefully write other characters too as the movie just doesnt star only one person but a lot of people.
4. ACTORS and DIRECTORS:
Im not gonna talk about how to make films or how to act as we have a lot of people who are amazingly talented at this and also that i have completely no clue about it. But you have a huge role to play here. Please read the story and about the character in-depth and question the writer as being a writer is a very difficult job and a very lonely one too. So when you think there is something missing please share your thoughts collaborate and come out with a great story with great characters. And please difference of opinions is not an excuse to fight. It is something that we think about cos none of us are always right. If we are we arent human and this is the secondary problem with todays main characters.
5. PERFECTION:
They are too perfect. No one likes someone who is too perfect in reality. For example in ANNIYAN we all loved ambi watching him from the perspective of god or an invisible human stalker. But as the perfect citizen he was hated all round. Im just saying PERFECT CITIZEN here n not the perfect person. N movies that we really like are the ones where we connect to the characters and their flaws. this explains why we loved Praksh Raj and Jayam Ravi and all the characters in Santosh Subbramaniam. Im sure a lot of the average viewers out there would have seen it 5 to 6 times. And yes there are a lot of movies like that and i just vommitted what came to my mind first. So please make flaws and make characters believable. Flaws are the only way through which we as an audience connect with the characters.
6. Lastly something to the PRODUCERS and ACTORS without whom movies will not happen:
Please try and give chances atleast once in a while to fresh ideas out there. If u like a new idea given by an amateur guy or the way he presented it please don shy away from it thinking if he could helm the task or not or worrying whether people would accept it or just going by returns. If u like it n its an amateur guy maybe have a well experienced and seasoned director looking over and supervising the project. If that person is a popular and well known director do not worry about how we the audience will take it as we might have different expectations not just from directors or but also from actors or even if we might understand wat the film actually conveys or not. As i said earlier please give us some more credit than what u give us now. I know its a huge thing that im asking you to blindly trust a hoard of people who might just lead the country to its destruction, but yes im asking you guys to take a leap of faith. I believe in this quote from the declaration of correspondence of the united states which says "The people who have the ability to act on something also have the responsibility to do so". And actors please break free from the clutches of wat people expect of you and try out new things. You are actors for heaven's sake, which means u can act as whomever you want and be whomever you want and not just the typical perfect "SUPER"heroes nowadays or the typical "Glam doll" heroines. I know u can do a lot more than this but please just try different things without worrying how your so called "FANS" would take it.
PS: I hope this changes the perspective a atleast a few people who read it, mainly the ones working in the industry, even though its a really boring, long article without any fun pictures, and therefore brings about watever little change in the way films are made today. I sincerely apologize for the negative remarks iv said about certain people above but i believe that negative things leave room for people to grow and become better.
Thank you for reading!!! :)
An avid lover of Cinema and an aspiring film maker.
Madhuresh Prasanna Venugopalan.
