“It is all about feeling good”, My wife concluded the discussion. I wanted to go on with more of my views, however she was not interested in continuing the conversation it. We were talking about our views on two different movies in two days; and obviously with opposing views.
The movies were PK and Interstellar. Strangely, both the movies had a similarity where humanity meets a power that if far far superior to them. Then it stops; the two movies were miles apart the way it was narrated. My wife started her jubilant reaction and follow through conversations when it i was PK. She loved the plot, laughed, followed, enjoyed and also chocked with glittering eye as the lovers speak in the movie after a long time; Strangely, after interstellar, she proclaimed she loved the stadium seating and the popcorn!
I had a different experience, and I started discussing with her on the reasons for me liking interstellar. She listened to all but ended as “PK is one of the best movies ever made, I love Amir, I loved the story, I loved the jokes and did not have to think to enjoy; It is all about felling good” - and walked away.
I started wondering what exactly is happening here. There should be a reason why she has that view and I wanted to reason out.
I’d like to start this with a basic declaration and understanding that Movies are entertainment. Movies are documents of their content and context. Movies are artistic forms of self-expression of the creator(s). Movies we see at theaters, on television, or home video are typically narrative films. They tell stories about characters going through experiences. The experience as it gets translated into a narrative medium, you as an observer experience and enjoy or suffer as it unfolds.
Part I: Explicit plots
Recounting the plots of a movie, telling what happens, is the simplest way to explain it to someone else. We as humans are genetically wired to ‘experience’ the movies as if it is happening to us in real life. This is referred as reflexive memory; and that’s the reason we get to the edge of the seat during a car chase and love the hero becomes a millionaire by simply singing a song. We dearly love that to happen to us and also don’t want to go though the process of understanding the meaning.
PK was a well taken movie and a clear example of the ‘explicit’ type. This film include lines of dialogue and depict obvious developments of character that explicitly communicate meaning to the viewers. Explicit content is perhaps some sort of “moral of the story” or socio-political attitude that the filmmaker is expressing directly through the mouths and actions of the characters. Some reason, an alien coming into our world after loosing the ‘remote’ and rest of the movie is all about finding the ‘remote’ to get back to his place. As the plot develops, the content looses the focus on the alien and his purpose of coming and the next steps, started expressing personal attitudes about life, gods(s) and law and survival, which the writer and director obviously want the audience to think about. He also go in detail explicitly how our beliefs in ‘god’ in different religious connotations is affecting the humanity as well as human settlements. During the narrative, the director had to make a lot of effort in making the same content resonate with different religious background to drive the same point - an effort will only be visible if you are an indian and the ‘context’ of such subjects.
We all know that there is a great difference between following a religion and performing rituals; we all know all religions have rituals that do not make any common sense on the surface. However we have hesitation in laughing at events when it happens to others. This was one of the major narrative followed in this movie. As long as the topic is too explicit - there is no reason to think through and derive any meaning - this movie was hitting the right tones throughout the 3 hour duration.
From my perspective, I did not see a great plot nor a story line in it. I felt the movie was a clever screenplay tied up with everyday stupidness being witnessed by a person from another planet and a collage of interesting skits tied together in a tight string. The story ends with the main character leaving this world without accomplishing anything; highlighting only the impact he made on the other characters. There was no effort in explaining the higher order capabilities of the alien, other than performing a comparable human activities in a faster fashion such as learning a language and reading the mind by holding someone's hand.
After the movie, we went to temple, spent some time ate in their canteen and came back. As usual my wife was mad with my son, as he was questioning the reason to go around the temple instead of going and eating first.
Part 2: Implicit plots
A movie with a slightly deeper level of interpretation is implicit content, which may be less obvious but can still be inferred by seeing how the characters change, grow, and develop throughout the course of the film. Issues and ideas dealing with general human relations (rather than those specific to individual characters) may be fairly easy to recognize but are not explicitly stated by the characters. Sometimes implicit meanings are less obvious, and different viewers might interpret the same thing in different ways, depending upon their own experiences and expectations. Especially if the plot is around science, then a good understanding of the science as we know and an open mind to the fiction that can extend in a possible way is necessary.
In Interstellar we see implicitly the narrative interwoven in a thick fabric of high level of science and close to real fictional representation. A pilot turned farmer gets in to a secret NASA expedition to extend the mankind beyond earth. He had to go through the wormholes, land into planets and go through a gigantic spinning blackhole to realize singularity. He also experiences the time dilation, thousand feet wave, lives in a tesseract, uses gravity as a dimension to communicate to her daughter and himself, would like to influence his own choices in the past to affect the outcome (5th dimension).
At the end of the movie, you end up realizing one thing, as how insignificant we are, in the collection of multiple universes, gigantic stars and blackholes and realization of superior being (as refereed as ‘they’ in the movie) and puts a unparalleled perspective of how we view things. We see all three men and a women force to contend with unexpected dangers in ways that imply how differently individuals can deal with the same events and suggest that certain compromises in one’s ideals may need to be made in order to survive and be an expeditors. As the story unfolds the science fiction of highest degree, it was all about a father want to see a safe and better future for his kids. And also the daughter’s agony, anger and a deep rooted affection and belief on his dad evolve as a “poetic justice” for the characters involved. The movie had to sink in and settle to get the open ends closed a while after it had ended.
One can analyze the movies as a formalist, or a realist or a contextualist - in any which way - it is all how you are and how you relate to the movie brings you the best experience. I liked the later. When I asked my son, he said quietly Interstellar was a good movie and PK was funny!
We did not go to the temple after the movie; However I understood the meaning for the statement “It is all about feeling good” to see a funny movie and not to have a conversation after that.
End of Part 1 and Part 2
