XX and The Importance Of Cinema

After successfully having fulfilled our civilian job of making a brilliant film like XX fail and making mediocre films an Industry hit (Not Leo Or Jawan or Definitely Jailer), XX has finally landed on Netflix and even-though this was a point I had mentioned somewhat elaborately in my review, it is still a  question that has been lingering in my mind; What is the importance of cinema and will cinema be able to function beyond the level of entertainment and “time pass” as a certain Superstar said, in this day and age???

Whenever the topic of importance of cinema comes, no line than Godard’s famous “Cinema is as important as bread today” comes to my mind. When the young lads at Cahiers wrote their beautiful bullshit, it has the feel of the Communist Manifesto, in the sense that, a new thing is being created before our eyes.

Reading one or 2 of those, from my POV, of a “ADHD afflicted GenZ” who has access to forms of media other than Cinema, what got me thinking was, what did Cinema mean to them. You know, from reading only the description of what Cahiers Du Cinema wrote, the way they viewed Cinema was in a way, extremely different from the way we see Cinema today (even among us “CinePhiles” I guess). The way they talked about Cinema then, is the way we talk about; Do we even talk about anything?

Maybe it is the fact that they could talk like that because they lived, as 20 somethings unburdened by pressure of being a “Kudumbasthan” or a College Student studying in Sastra.

But even then, what is it that they exactly got from watching films, that they wrote so much about, which for Anurag Kashyap, is a religion itself?

I saw Chitha and cried for it, but how exactly does it really impact and affect and change my life? I ask this in genuine innocence for, the way they talked about Hitchcock and Hawks, is the way I want to talk about Cinema, to be deeply affected by it, not just emotionally, but in a way that it ultimately becomes something so important to me as the food I eat, begrudgingly daily. Maybe it affects and impacts me in a subconscious way.

And all this, desire, passion, question pretty much broke out, when I saw a meme (quite a funny one ofc) in Instagram, which memefied the current hot topic i.e. Animal. The scene that got memefied is the opening scene of the Animal Trailer where “Sunai De Raha Hain, Behra Nai Hu Main” is said by Us to an alarm clock daily as we wake up. Two things about it really stood out to me.

The fact that, even such a brilliant and impactful scene (at least for me), can be stripped of its contextual meaning, provided by sound and other elements, to be stripped down ultimately to a joke, was interesting. I want to use the word “alarming” but then it would be gatekeeping the potential of the use of images in today’s time.

Second was that, an image, not created, but modified from an existing source, spoke a lot to me, then films made today was an interesting note. Of course, Chiththa affected me more than this image, but isn’t that expected of a 2 Hr film, which is able to exploit the image through different methods at a larger level?

And all this connects back to XX in the simple way that, in a way it just didn’t try much. As much as I loved XX and don’t want to criticise and nitpick it, the idea of setting the film in a time and period, when Cinema was the only way people talked to the ones “above” them, seems so simplistic and reductive of the issues that people face today and the issues that Cinema faces today, which ironically, XX faced as it didn’t have that much attendance at the theatres, to recoup its budget.

What we instead see is a self-masturbatory nod to the “Greatness of Cinema”, “Power Of Cinema”, “Power Of Art”, which while definitely not being the only theme of the film, is definitely a prominent part of the film. I mean, we don’t even need a XX for that topic. Anyone on Facebook can see millions of videos about how MGR brilliantly used Cinema to connect with the people to become the literally CM of the state.

because What we are seeing today is not just overflow of Cinema, but also other mediums sourced from Cinema like TikTok, Web Series, YouTube Videos etc. And the important thing could have been to address the fact of how Cinematic images can be made important in a time when images are being thrown left, right and centre at us. But the film takes the easy way and talks about Cinema being brilliant during a time when there was no competition for it.

The End.