Going beyond Hollywood - what's stopping us?

Recently, I watched a few Bengali movies – which were surely among the some of the best that I have seen. I particularly liked Satyajit Ray’s Jana Aranya (The middleman), and Rituparno Ghosh’s Utsab (The festival). I was wondering why movies like these do not get a wider audience. Couple of reasons sprang to my mind.

The first one is the marketing and distribution muscle that regional movies (or even movies from developing world) typically lack. The converse of the same reason explains why Hollywood flicks are so popular all over the world – despite a lot of them being mindless assaults on your senses (particularly the ones that trickle down into Indian theatres).

However, there are some studios like The Criterion Collection  which aims to release on DVD such rare gems from all over the world. Ray is exactly the kind of director whose movies Criterion would typically bring out – his movies are world-class, have not been widely distributed, most discs that are available are of bad picture and sound quality – things that Criterion does a good job of rectifying. But even they seem to have studiously neglected Indian movies. I wonder what may be the reason – piracy? 

One other reason behind relative popularity of movies from different countries may be rooted in the communication styles of those countries. While I was watching the Bengali movies – I was noticing that there are plenty of subtleties in communication that I will miss if I do not know the language. There are obviously local references that work only if you know that culture and language intimately – but I mean something more than that. More often than not, in Bengali movies – communication is implicit, messages are often left unsaid, the words are unspoken. Contrast that with the American way of communication – messages are direct, explicit. Even if you are from a different culture, you have no problem following the nuances.

Over time, however, this cultural imbalance is gradually being bridged. Studios like Criterion are helping, so are online stores like Amazon where search features and buyer reviews make such movies much more easy to find. Now even in Landmark stores you can see a section on DVDs of world movies.  Sathyam cinemas in Chennai used to have something called Pure Cinema, where they used to screen good movies from all over the world once a week (they seem to have scrapped this now – not sure why). We also have World Movies channel over cable – which does have some good foreign language movies. Hope we see more commercial initiatives like this – if there is a good movie to watch, or a good book to read – language should not a barrier!

'Das Experiment' and Indian philosophy

Today I watched a fantastic German movie – ‘Das Experiment’, which is based on the famous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. It was a simulation (or role-play), where a group of volunteers were assigned the roles of prisoners and guards – and the experimenters wanted to observe how much the assigned roles influence the behavior of the individuals.

The answer, as it disturbingly turned out – was too much, so that the volunteers almost completely took on the roles as real as the experiment progressed. While on the first day most volunteers treated the simulation with humor and detachment, over the next few days their behavior seemed to personify the roles that they were assigned. Some of the ‘guards’ turned abusive, sadistic – and the ‘prisoners’ showed signs of extreme depression and stress. The situation worsened to the extent that the experiment had to be stopped midway.

 Das experiment is loosely based on the same research – and it does a brutally convincing job of portraying the simulation. It makes you wonder about human nature – and how much we are really the product of our environment. Based on the conclusion of the experiment, the answer would be – almost entirely.

 The movie made me wonder about the thin line separating the roles that we are assigned by society, and our real selves. To take that statement to its logical extension – it makes me wonder if we have a ‘real self’ at all. If something so explicit as an experiment or game can change people’s behavior in a few days – obviously a long-standing role, designation, stereotyping can have the same effect. This also explains how so many apparently normal people become evil instruments of the Nazi regime during the second world war.

 May be we shouldn’t identify ourselves so much with our roles – and have a bit more detachment in the way we perform those? Ancient Indian philosophy told us much the same thing, about the illusory nature of our societal roles, and the value of detachment. It’s amazing how different disciplines – philosophy, psychology, science etc. has a way of converging to the same truth.