Posts
What Is Reel? What Is Real? What
is Unreal? Is the Reel Always the Unreal? Or is the Real Always in a Way
Reflected in the Reel? Is what we see on screen the reflection of the real
life? Or what the screen or the Reel projects into our minds, later, grow and
shape our Reality? These are the FAQs painfully thrown at the world of Cinema
and TV and the people habituating this ambiguous world.
There is no simple answer to this
complex question. But let’s attempt to find some believable conclusion and conglomeration
between this eternal love-hate relationship of the Reel and the Real.
Well, honestly, and with all
humility, I believe, that we, the dream merchants, the cast and crew of the
so-called ‘Glamor World’ (Oh! They see our Glamor but fail to notice the
Grit, the Grime, the Blood, Sweat and Toil, but that’s another topic
altogether!!!) are possessed by this Dichotomy between the Reel and the Real.
And our pathetic yet glorious state is best described in the dialogues of the
much-applauded movie ‘Inception’, “She (Mal) was possessed by an idea, this
one, very simple idea, that changed everything. That our world wasn't real.
That she needed to wake up to come back to reality, that, in order to get back
home, we had to kill ourselves.”
We, the ones who are passionately
in love with the world of Cinema and Television and the weird, real-surreal
world of the Audio-visual are almost in a similar state as Mal from the movie.
We all are possessed by an ‘Idea’… the ‘Idea of Creation’ that constantly makes
us feel that the world we live in is not ‘enough’ Real… just a bit short of
‘Really’ satisfying…and so we need to Create…we are possessed by the virus of
an Idea that only ‘Creating’ is Real... very much in accordance with Plato’s concept
of the ‘Original’ and the ‘Copy’ and the constant jostle between which one comes
before the other, I presume, and hence this ‘Idea of Creation’ bugs us… eats us
up day in and day out and drives us up to making every Friday box office rush
and every Wednesday TV TRP traffic work out at their best. Like Mal, our world, the one we live in, in
our all physicality is only part real. We are mostly possessed by the Idea –
the colors, the sounds, the action, the drama and the catharsis. And this
catharsis is what is similar to Mal’s description of ‘killing ourselves’.
In every movie one watches, in
every TV show that one weeps and laughs over, we, the makers, the mothers and the
fathers, the ruthless laborers of this world of entertainment, lose our real
selves, kill our own ‘Real’ identities and ‘Create’ another ‘Reality’ to be
projected on to the Reel. We, the
Writers, as we write, become our very Protagonists, donning their roles, their
shades, entering their stream of consciousness and kill ourselves for that one
Idea. The Directors lose themselves and become the altar-ego of their
characters, donning their voice, their body language, their thought process.
The Cinematographers lose their own vision to don these characters’ POVs. The
actors, more so, lose themselves completely, Kill themselves in order to wake
up to another Reality and birth new faces, looks, bodies and souls. The same
with the Music Directors and the Choreographers who launch into another world
of sound and movement, of waves and vibrations that are so poignant that it
becomes the supreme vessel to transport the audience to the final world of the
Real-Unreal. And last but not the least, the Producers, the Channel guys, the
Distributors, the nameless Poster-boys and much-forgotten Spot-boys, they all
are, day in and day out, though much-unseen and behind the scene yet very-much in-front-of-the-line
Dreamers, the Souls who are possessed by this very same Idea of the
Unreal-turned-into-Real and vice versa. The struggle, the fight, the war, of
Love, of Passion, of more-than-mere-merchandise and of the final Star-Studded
Success… !
All for the sake of an Idea. One
seed. One thought. One concept. One picture. One sound. One dash of color. It
all begins from there and just as Cobb (De Caprio) in Inception says, “What is
the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea.
Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's
almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood
- that sticks; right in there somewhere.”
And then it goes on taking on a larger shape, a larger frame and a
larger scale and the world of ‘Reel’ is Created…very much out of the ‘Real’.
Are you Tired and Perplexed by
this heavy-duty Deconstruction-Theory-like-Insipid explanation of ‘The Reel and
the Real’??? Ahem… Excuse me! But you see, I too was possessed by an Idea… the
Idea to shape and explain the whole dichotomous world of Cinema and TV as A
Real Virus, A Resilient Bacteria, An Internal Enemy we are very much in Love
with, the Self-Destructive Process of Creation, forming itself out of the Real
World, the Real experience and yet like Magic, having the charm to transport one
to the Unreal. But no more! In our next discussion we will get down to a more
‘Real’ approach to Cinema, with our film reviews, TV talks and any other
interesting news from the world of Entertainment. So, till then, Dreeeeaaam
Onnnnn of the Unreal, but with your feet grounded into the Reality! Because, we,
the Dream Merchants, apologize for not being able to take any responsibility
for your getting infected by some unseen yet potentially poignant virus created
by us – by some Idea of the Real-Unreal!
