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First things first, if you haven’t seen Baar Baar Dekho yet, this article may have some spoilers.
Indian cinema is evolving day-by-day and our filmmakers are working day and night to simply entertain you.
You, you who gets to enjoy the popcorn, a nice cold drink, and gets to experience another world created by someone else and take you to. What I have noticed though is, after every film I see there is always a complaint about how a film is too real, or TOO unreal. Or it wasn’t entertaining enough, or it was too confusing.
I am an aspiring filmmaker and have had little but just enough to understand what REALLY goes on behind the scenes to make just a single scene come to life, and that adrenaline that rushes through your skin when the shot is just right.
Every Friday when I see a new Hindi film I don’t go in to find faults, but to hope our industry has discovered something new to tell the world. And yesterday Nitya Mehra, debut director, did the exact thing to me. Baar Baar Dekho is a story that reminds us to not take advantage of a single current moment in life, and to not worry about the future. We spend a lot of our lives planning about when we’ll finish school, college, and then when we’ll have kids, get married, etc. But we forget the most important thing life has given us and that is to live in the now. Of course this is a simple message, and anyone could hop onto YouTube and make a short little three-minute video about this.
But Nitya took her creative expertise to another level and decided to show us the ‘what if’s’ in life and what if we took so much advantage of life and planned it all out. What if, you got the chance to see your future turn out to be what you planned, and it fails miserably?! She also uses other futuristic ideas of life as she intertwines the concept of time in the film. It is mentioned by both producers Farhan Akhtar and Karan Johar in this round table discussion below that in-fact the film is not a ‘time traveling film’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L5c4TJY8AA
While I have totally spoiled the film for you if you have not seen it yet…I more so wanted to talk about acceptance in our society. I’m not sure if India liked the film more or less than those here in America, but I have read mixed reviews of the film all across…and then there’s me who gave this dazzling five-star review of the film. I was asked, “Why?”
One, of course a film review is a single persons opinion and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I truly loved every aspect of the film and would see it over and over again. But I also was able to connect on all sorts of levels with the film. It took me out of reality, but I ended up walking out with a real life message. When one can take ‘Reel’ life and match it with ‘Real’ life, I like to think that the artist has done something very right.
We tend to compare our Hindi cinematic medium with other industries like Hollywood and that is wrong. Hollywood offers a totally different type of entertainment vs B-town. In fact our Industry has a totally different level of talented people which no other industry in the world has. We hold the value of art through all aspects: Film, music, dialogue, storytelling, acting, and even through our amazing directors. We have the ability to tell stories way differently than following one formula. Its important our audience, viewers and even fans understand this because film is a piece of art work one must not bash miserably, but appreciate. You may not like a piece of artwork, but at least show some appreciation towards the people who spend endless amount of time to let their own vision come to life.
Whether you go see Baar Baar Dekho or any Hindi film next time, I want you as an individual to not read any reviews before seeing the film. Do not listen to any persons opinion, and just simply walk in that cinema hall with your popcorn and cold drink and sit back and let the filmmaker take you into their world. This will stray away from any pre-biased opinions and let you get a grip onto Reel life.
