"Be", And There Was...

Let me start my first "filmy" blog post with a sentence that I have, in the past, used to describe myself. ad nauseum.

I love stories. 

Stories of any form, in any medium, when told by a master storyteller hold the power to transform lives. The art of story telling is fascinating and yet, there are some brilliant minds that seem to make it all feel so effortless. The tales they weave for us are so mesmerizing that we're blind to all the hard work that went into creating that effect. And this is more true for the movies than any medium. It also probably explains why movies bring out such strong opinions in us, the audience. As the moving images on screen hold us captive in a dark room for anywhere from 2 to 4 hours, we soak in the imagination of a human mind, so far beyond our reach, yet seeping into our sub-conscious, using all our audio and visual senses. 

And when we walk away, we spend just as much time in wonder, discussing every character nuance, every blink-and-you-miss-it plot point. How did it happen? Why did he do that? What did she mean by that? Fictional characters, hitherto unbeknownst to us, are suddenly scrutinized in great detail and then either loved or hated.

All because someone, somewhere, thought of a story that wanted to be told.

"Be, and there was."

Kun Faayakun...

A few hours ago, I watched a movie that is right now keeping me up because I simply have to talk about it. Rockstar, by Imtiaz Ali, is not a movie that lets its audience off easily. There is so much pain and passion that it seems impossible to not be deeply invested in the protagonist, the immensely flawed yet extremely vulnerable artiste-musician, who is on a search for what it takes to make music.

It is not my intention to review the movie in this post. I'm sure there will be, and probably already are, a dozen reviews out there, each by a far more qualified reviewer. What I really want to talk about is my awe for the writer and the beauty of his writing. The movie, even at a story level, is not without its flaws. Indeed there were people I watched it with, who, quite simply put, just hated it entirely. Yet Ali's love and deep understanding for his Jordan is undeniable. In fact, I felt it was often to the detriment of the development of the other characters in the story. I cannot help but wonder - What does it take, as a writer, to be so involved with your character, in all his blatant faults, that every lapel pin added to his costume  in your mind has a back story for it? 

** Spoiler Alert! **

In my opinion (for what it's worth), Rockstar is a character study, trying to masquerade as a love story. If I were to break it down, to me, a love story needs an equal involvement from the writer in both his/her lead characters. Imtiaz Ali seemingly chose to ignore his Heer almost entirely. So much so, that almost from the very first line of dialogue she delivers you wonder why he didn't even care enough to cast someone, anyone else in place of Nargis Fakhri. For the next three hours she continues to make you cringe and wince every time she is on screen and you wonder why Jordan doesn't see her like you do. By the end of the movie you realize you know very little about her and what's worse, you don't really care. Not even when she dies. The Heer that Jordan sees remains unearthed by the writer, represented only by a shadow of the girl he must actually love, portrayed ineffectively by just another pretty face. Jordan goes through a spectrum of life changing experiences and as his audience you see every bit of his many layers. Yet the girl, instrumental in bringing about almost all of those experiences, is sadly neglected. 

From his past works, knowing Imtiaz Ali to be a consummate story teller, it's hard to believe he intended it to be a stilted one-sided story of one man and his love for a girl. So I wonder, as a writer, how wonderful it must be to find a character so strong in himself that his every other association feels incidental to the story. To know his every mood, every habit. To breathe life into him, almost as if you were his God and his entire world wouldn't exist if you, the writer, didn't conjure it up in your minds eye. 

Or is the writer, in reality, a slave to his characters and stories, unable to rest until they are told as the character wants them to be told? Maybe the philosophy of "Be, and there was.." is actually intended for the story teller and not the story. Maybe it is the story that gives birth to the writer and not the reverse. 

If that is in fact true, then this meandering post of incoherent thoughts is testament to the fact that the writer in me is still waiting to be born... waiting for that one character to fill my mind with his/her world and maybe, in doing so, captivate the minds of all who wander toward me, as my audience.

Imtiaz Ali, I envy you.