Friday, December 9, 2016

What does your art say?

Helplessness should be a genre in itself. I recently watched The Fundamentals of Caring (2016) and you should too. It’s basically about how each one of us on this planet is healing in different ways. You don’t need to be paraplegic to understand this analogy. Not so sure whether time heals or not but we certainly do. Sometimes with others’ input. Sometimes on our own. This is so because we are helpless beings, always in the pursuit of something that enhances our excuse to be alive. Speaking of which, helplessness has played a major role in the upliftment of arts. Be it painting or poems or a sculpture, the fact that nothing humane is for eternity plays heavily on our collective conscience. And that realization is also what makes our species beautiful. Beaten, broken, hopeful, hopeless but perpetually stuck in the process of healing.

Footnote: One of my favourite helpless scenes comes from Barfi (2012) when Ranbir Kapoor’s dad suffers from a cardiac arrest at night. He is in agony and trying to scream for help but Ranbir’s deaf-and-mute character is blissfully asleep.

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