Appreciating the toil.

I don\’t think its a sin to get carried away with something which you love and gives you appreciations. It happens with everyone. In a cricket match, more often you see a pace bowler getting carried away with the bouncer technique. In cinema, the Director gets carried away with the same team he works it just like the last three Joshiy – Mohanlal films. Its, of course, important not to get carried away by success. But at the same time, its a matter of pride to enjoy success and live the moment. Where people fail here is when they keep living the moment and doesn\’t move on.

As far as I am concerned, I don\’t really get carried away with success but I do enjoy and take pride in it. But its an antonym when it comes to failures. I tend to keep that in my mind for long. Though I know I will rise up from the ashes and confident about myself, I get more depressed about failures and never forget those. It is when I care a lot of superstitions as well. Talking about superstitions, it happens with me during exams as well. Getting up at the same time, having the same breakfast, using the same pen etc etc. It sounds a little kiddish but I am pretty much sure that I am not the only fish in this school. Superstitions is not the topic, I am writing here about.

I belong to the category where I get carried away with the success of a film which I really like. Not every film I like inspires me. Only a few does and what it does to me is take my thinking to the next level. This is exactly what the success of \’Premam\’ did to me. I had no contacts or nothing with the film but \’Premam\’, as a film, inspired me for its exclusive style of making and the director, oh man, he is something, isn\’t he? Alphonse Putharen is a name who is now at the top in the list of my role models, inspirations and favorite directors. At times, I feel its a touch over rated and is a highly mouth publicized film. But isn\’t that what the Director wanted by not releasing a teaser or a trailer? He played his cards right. He knew his film had in it to make the audience go crazy on the first day itself and thus gets a lot of unpaid online promotions and unpaid mouth promotions. You can\’t be anything but jealous of his creative brain and the success the film is earning. Yesterday I got into a very bad debate with someone – of course, personal issues added up the spice – about the film. Now there is something I strictly follow when I view films. You can have a negative review of it but never degrade any films because it means to disrespect the hard work behind it. Every film is made out of days and months of toil and pain. Its never easy to make films. Like Alphonse himself said in an interview, Film is not something that anyone can enter and taste success. He further said that film making is the most toughest job. I totally agree with him. So yeah, biased reviews are a challenge and threat to this wonderful art called Cinema. I agree that everyone doesn\’t like everything. Everything, let alone cinema, will have its share of haters. But the point I don\’t get is why don\’t certain people like a film which is widely accepted? I mean what more do you expect from the film? The same issue happened with Drishyam as well. Drishyam is undoubtedly one of the best ever films produced in the industry and yet, some people call it overrated. Its interesting to notice that the haters of Drishyam didn\’t like Oru Indian Pranayakadha or Ezhu Sundara Raathrikal, which released along. Likewise, people hating \’Premam\’ doesn\’t even care to watch films like \’Ivide\’, \’Nirnayakam\’ or \’Lukka Chuppi\’. These three films are stronger on the story side and \’Premam\’ provides entertainment, not to forget it has a very interesting story which any young guy can relate with.

An interesting observation which came from one of my friends is coming to my mind now. I think its her dad who made this remark. People are all worn out and stressed with their respective jobs. They see film as a medium to entertain and relieve their stress. They don\’t care about stories or anything but pure entertainment. This remark is of Bollywood films. When I partly agree to this point, I still feel that its an encouragement to make more senseless, illogical 100crore club movies which only degrades the level of Indian film in the International sector. When it comes to Malayalees, we are one of the better reviewers of films. Malayalees aren\’t fools or idiots to mouth publicize a film which doesn\’t deserve to win. We accept and publicize films which deserve to win. At the same time, its such a shame that films like \’Lukka Chuppi\’ and \’Nirnayakam\’ are failing. This is when the important question should be raised. Are Malayalam audience idolizing Bollywood audience? Well, that is a debate for another day.

So I started with getting carried away and let me get back to it. I admit that I have got badly carried with the success of a film which has inspired me and taught me ingredients of success. But at the same time, I am not \’blinded with my stupid film craze\’ because I went and watched other beautiful films released at the same time and posted good reviews about it as well. The final tail end is, its no sin to get carried away with anything, but don\’t degrade or ignore the other options. I have used films as an option to convey this whole point because its a topic I can talk a lot about and at the same time, films are the best medium to get into someone\’s brain. Just in case if you think my view point on film reviews, I follow this, Respect the hard work, if not the creation.