Right at the outset, before I lose a whole bunch of readers because of the (dreaded?) words SPIC MACAY in the title, I’d like to assure the reader that it is not completely related to SPIC MACAY. In fact, I hope that after the first post, it’ll be only related to films and nothing at all to do with SPIC MACAY.
What is film appreciation?
Sounds pretty heavy no? Most of us do like to watch films without paying too much attention to what we are watching. Even if we do pay it some attention, there isn’t really any effort to think of it as an art form. But there is a lot of thought which goes into films to make it the finished product you see. The way this thought process develops, and how it results into the film you watch, is the discussion which is integral to film appreciation.
Where do films come from? Its difficult to define one single art form from which films have developed. In fact, films are a seamless merging of atleast 3 different art forms: photography, music and theater. Add to this the oldest art form of all, story telling, and you’ve got films. Another way of looking at it is that it is a medium using both visual and aural forms.
So let’s look at each of these separately.
The visual medium consists of what you see. (Yeah, that wasn’t very difficult.) This may be scenery, shots of people and their surroundings. It could be an insight into their way of looking at the world (even from the perspective of a dog, or a blind boy), their hopes and aspirations (which could materialize as the standard ‘dream sequence’) or something else.
The aural medium consists of dialogue, background music, ambient noise, sound effects and songs. The aural medium is also very important in creating the mood of the film. Alfred Hitchcock, one of the best exponents of the suspense genre, would have complete silence in his scary scenes. The effect this can create has to be seen to be believed. Sholay, a Bollywood classic, uses signature tunes to announce the arrival of the antagonist, Gabbar. All these become a part of the process of watching the film, and hence film appreciation as well.
Now how do you go about deciding whether a film is good or bad? Well, you can start by looking at how well it uses these two forms of media to say whatever it has to say. (An important thing to note is that this is not the be-all-end-all of films. There are always films which destroy one or the other caveats I spoke of earlier, and still are fantastic. But we’ll leave that for some other time.)
Why does SPIC MACAY have to get into FA?
So we had a lot of discussion on this topic when we wanted to have film screenings in our college as a part of SPIC MACAY. This is what I feel about it.
FA is not very different from the discussions we have when a ‘classical art form’ such as Dhrupad or Bharatnatyam is performed in college. Meandering discussions which are technical to some extent, but (mostly) accessible to the layman attending the concert do tend to follow. Words like aalap, raag, taal, mudra are discussed to sensitize the viewer of the basic technicalities of the art form he is about to witness.
FA is similar in these aspects. Films are an art form by itself, merging various different the forms of music, theater, photography, dance and story telling, to come up with a unique form of itself. A typical appreciation of a film will ramble through acting skills, editing techniques, dialogue writing, camera angles, and whatever else caught the viewer’s fancy to build a better and more wholesome picture of the film.
What is wrong with the way we watch films today? There is hardly any discussion regarding the film. If the film is a no-brainer, then that’s different. But a good film needs to be discussed! Just saying, “Ah, the film was good. Where are we eating?” isn’t going to cut it. Sometimes we go up to ‘The acting was terrific. And…’ and we blank out. That’s where FA comes in. It gives you a more detailed idea of what processes go into film making, and that makes the whole thing more enjoyable.
And with SPIC MACAY’s viewing of films? Well, there seems to be an unshakable predisposition towards the ‘classics’. Not that these films aren’t good (they’re fantastic) but they hardly serve as a good introduction to FA. A ‘classic’ is, according to some, necessarily 50 years old. However, current films work much better, as we saw with Harishchandrachi Factory some time back. Maybe it’s time to relook at this policy of ours to shy away from choosing more relevant films which will be easily accepted by our younger viewers? Hey, its not a bad idea to even look for cinematic merit in a Tom and Jerry cartoon!