Movies Movies Movies!

As a kid, I loved movies just like anyone else. If you ask me precisely, I cannot give you an answer to when I have started obsessing about them. However, I do remember reading about Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali in my Gul Mohar 3rd std NCERT English textbook. The sketches he drew for story boarding were very impressive. I was still at an age, where I would only look at the images in comics and would not read any dialogues. Right from that point on, I have always wondered on what kind of movies we should be making. As I grew up, I went through phases. Balachander Phase, Mani Ratnam Phase, then Kurosawa, Bergman, Tarkovsky etc came along later in film school. All these phases, only confused and also intrigued me. What is a film? Is it an art? is it acceptable as an art? I truly and strongly believe that it is the most complex and refined form of an art. What music, dance and poetry were for many centuries, Film is for this century. And, it is more. Film is where all the traditional art forms, story telling, music, acting, visual photography etc come together, to accomplish one goal. The goal is multi pronged. Very personal to a film maker and very absorbing to the audience. The goal is to create an illusion, a world beyond our world. This is my humblest attempt to understand and explore how films fit into our life.

Let me start with a small film very close to my heart, "The Road Home". A film by Zhang yimou, one of the 5th generation film makers from main land China. I stumbled across this film in college by accident. I was surprised that this film is not as well known as the director's "To Live", "Raise the Red Lantern" or more recently "Hero". It has all the necessary ingredients that you expect from a Zhang Yimou movie. It has beautiful cinematography with saturated colors and a haunting music score. The film is a love story, so simple and well told that it forces you not, but be hugely impressed by its elegance and poise. The film starts of with blue-gray filtered images of a young Chinese man going back to his village from city. We understand from his back story that he is visiting the village to pay his last respects to his father, who has recently passed away. The setting is rather bleak, coupled with black-white monochrome images of vast rural Chinese landscape. As, he tries to console his old mother and make plans to bury his father, the old lady has her own ideas about burial. She wants a traditional funeral for her husband, that he should be carried miles by people to the burial ground. She reasons that his father was the village teacher and contributed immensely to the development of the village, hence he should be buried traditionally and with respect.This seems like a rather irrational demand to her son, since most of the young people of the village have migrated to cities nearby. As the son grapples with his mother's demand, which could put a heavy constraint on his finances, he begins to reminisce his parents courtship. The monochrome imagery paves way to rich textured colorful shots of beautiful Zhang Ziyi, juxtaposed with rural landscapes. What follows, is one of the most endearing love stories I have ever seen. The movie works marvelously at many levels and chiefly due to the cinematography and a haunting background score. The visual images are in complete harmony with Bao san's music score. It works and works like a magic! Zhang yimou uses silence and lingering camera shots to exemplify tender and the subtlest human feelings. Unique moments like the newly wed wife waiting patiently by the road side for the first sight of her husband, touches your heart and stays with you for a long time. Zhang Ziyi is a treat to eyes. The director scripts poetry in the face of the lead actress and she is as moving and as luminous as the picture. She comes across as a beautiful, innocent, young village girl with great determination. Ziyi's radiant presence makes you empathize with her character. Zhang Yimou, in my own sense has probably reached his peak in exploring relationships with this film. He extensively uses dissolves to give the film a very poetic feel to it. Interspersing both black and white and color footage, as well as contemporary perspectives and flashbacks, he truly impresses with his visual sensuality.The master film maker is in complete form and gives you visuals that numbs your senses and carries you to a different world. To his world. This is precisely why the film works. A simple tale told marvelously, absorbs and makes you emotionally speechless. Zhang Yimou proves that a story well told and genuine at its heart needs very less dramatization.

Movie website : http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/theroadhome/

Road home :