How I learned to stop criticizing and love…

I have been suffering from an unknown fatal disease lately. Its a disease which has got a ‘z’ in its name; a weird pronunciation; few silent letters; and no info in Google. It’s a disease which changed my senses of cinema. With different stages over a short span of time (say 4 years), it changed the way I perceive cinema.

Early stage (Pre-torrent era):
In this pre-torrent era, I watched all the Tamil and most of the Hindi movies. I managed to sit in the theatre for Oru naal oru kanavu full movie. The English movies varied from Starwars to Incredibles to War of the Worlds to Cindrella Man. (trivia: Iqbal and Cindrella Man in back to back shows). Then it happened. The entry of World Cinema with the beautiful Children of Heaven and brilliant Amorres Perros to make an impact and a yardstick for all the movies I watched from then.

Mid Stage (World Cinema era):
In this stage, I had a great difficulty in tolerating some Tamil and Hindi cinema. I thought that I should avoid watching such movies as it’s an insult for my senses of cinema. I watched all the movies in world cinema I came across and I compared that with the Indian cinema. It was the time, when all the Indian directors were criticized. I just made a point on a plagiarism everywhere. I categorized people as two: people who like Pokkiri and people who don’t. I got frustrated with Kabhi Alvida... and avoided Lage Raho... just to prove a point that I don’t watch normal entertainers. I watched a movie every single night and sometimes two or three in a row. IMDB became the most visited site in my browser history. I spent a huge portion of money in Burma bazaar for dvds every month. (Trivia: for foreign language movies, contact Rahman, Shop no: F-10, Burma bazaar, Chennai). I watched the movies of Ray, Almodovar, Wong Kar-wai and others. Ray became the most favorite director in India. It all happened so fast.

Final Stage:
It reached this stage where this kind of behavior can only be associated to a disease. This is the stage where some part of early and mid stages got back its position. A déjà vu feel when I saw most of the movies. Sometimes it happened when watching a movie for the first time. The movies just failed to register in mind. It took till end credits to confirm that the movie has been watched before. Shockingly, Azhagiya Thamizh… looked like a very entertaining movie for me and so did Kallori and OSO. “Okay” was the comment to every movie. I never bothered to write any reviews. I just enjoyed reading reviews and blogs.

In the end, I just started enjoying movies for its making and its writing. If I didn’t like it, just that it wasn’t intended for me. What do you call me? A movie buff or a movie maniac?