The easy WAy out!!!

Finally broke our jinx last evening by watching The Dark Knight – the jinx of having gone wrong on a series of movies that we chose to watch in theatres. And after movies like Black & White, U, Me aur Hum and Ugli aur Pagli, what a treat this was!Enough has been said about Heath Ledger, who absolutely owns the film… it couldn’t have been anyone else’s show, despite their best efforts. But I have come back more impressed with the writers of the movie (Screenplay: Christopher Nolan & Jonathan Nolan) than anything else. Superhero films, to me, usually, have been instant gratification. I have watched them for thrills, and forgotten them the next day. Till Spiderman 2 came along – the first time someone seemed to be looking beyond the superpowers and special effects – trying to get across the message that it is not the extent of power one wields, but what one intends to do with it.The Dark Knight seems to take this message further – to understand how everyone justifies their stand – the Joker, Two Face, or even Batman himself. And the way they write so effortlessly gets the complicated point-of-view across! Consider, for example, this conversation where Joker convinces Two-Face about the necessity of chaos as the only balancing factor between those who have power and those who don’t. You can’t help marvel at the perverse logic. And then, with a start you remember that these are just lines written for a movie by a writer. I could copy paste the entire script from the web – because this is what they do through out the movie – play along the two sides of the argument.Which brings me to the part that I had actually set my mind to write about, when I began this post. What is the matter with the way we write our films? Why can’t we tell a story half as well? And why are we getting so, so lazy?Let me explain. The major problem that I find with most Hindi movies that I watch these days is the laziness in building a character. Or working hard to explain a sequence of events that lead to certain emotions. We are comfortable with taking shortcuts like using voiceovers, or narrations from friends for this. And in some cases, even a representation from the media comes in handy.Ugli aur Pugli, for example. Anyone who has watched the movie would remember how every couple of minutes Ranvir Shorey’s voiceovers would take over. Or Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na… we use the extremely easy way of friends telling a story to establish the protagonists and their personality. Or, how could we forget Rang De Basanti, where even Sue is used similarly when her voiceover lets us know that DJ (Aamir Khan) is actually awakening from his slumber while lying with his head on her lap. Was there no cinematic way of conveying this? U, Me aur Hum? Where the story is anyway in flashback with Ajay Devgan narrating it?In some places it is even more blatant. Remember Krrish? Naseeruddin Shah’s character there had the habit of looking directly at the camera in an extreme close up and yelling out “BREAKING NEWS” to announce what he was going to do next. Shootout at Lokhandwala also uses the same trick through Dia Mirza reporting as a journalist from the place of the shootout. Rang De Basanti, once again, had half the story told through mike toting journalists reporting from various locations as the drama unfolded.And if I am still not clear about what I’m trying to drive at, let me tell you about some of the films where we have seen beautiful narrative. Take any movie by Hrishikesh Mukherjee or Gulzar – where half an hour in to the story, one would have complete clarity about each character. In recent times, remember Lage Raho Munnabhai? What will it take for us to write more like that?As someone said, being simple is the most difficult thing in this world.