Monday, July 27, 2015

A matter of lingual inadequacy

If you haven't watched Winter Sleep (2014) yet, please do. Running for 3 hours and 15 minutes, this Turkish delight is undoubtedly a cinematic gem. It's filled with beautifully shot scenes and succintly written conversations. In fact, the entire film is a series of dialogues between the pivotal characters. By the end, you realize how there are layers to the people featured in the film and they aren't what they seemed to be during the first hour. 
Anyway, i don't really care whether you put yourself through this recco or not but i noticed something. Turkish cinema might be comparatively tinier than ours but it's true to what it is. It doesn't pretend to be something else. In simpler words, Turkish cinema is Turkish cinema. Can we say the same about Hindi cinema? (I deliberately used the word Hindi cinema there since Bollywood can arouse objection.) What's so Hindi about Hindi cinema nowadays? Forget everything else, do Hindi cinema even employ Hindi dialogues anymore? And please don't call it Hindustani just because Bollywood lyrics leech heavily on Urdu. The fact of this matter is we get is a mishmash of so many things that the essence of the language (among other features) is diluted as an end product. 


Him:want to ask you something. Not resisting evil...what does that mean to you? 
Her: Well, one day, thieves attack you and you don't resist. I suppose that's it.
Him: I don't want an example. Give me a logical definition. 
Her: I wonder if there is any logic in it.
Him: A logical definition of not resisting evil is to remain indifferent to incidents defined as evil within an ethical framework.
Her: How's that?
Him: For instance, if we were to make this idea of not resisting evil the basis of our behaviour, what kind of life would we have? What kind of life? What would it be like? Thieves, murderers, psychos
would prosper. Chaos would reign everywhere.

Imagine the above exchange in Hindi. Imagine how that'd sound like. If you can, you can save Hindi cinema by writing for Bollywood!

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