Jan 10th, 2003
Rant on Kannada movies and other things
I find Kannada movies mostly unwatchable, for one reason. There they haven’t yet realised the difference between a movie and a play.
In a play, when two characters converse, they stand side by side. This unnatural device is adopted because the audience has to see the expressions on the faces of the characters. In a movie, you don’t face this constraint. Characters can sit face to face, and the camera can capture their expressions. Kannada movies treat the camera the same way plays treat an audience
In a play, you have to exaggerate your expressions. To show surprise, it is not enough to raise your eyebrows. You have to show it with your entire body, because the audience is far off and can’t see subtle gestures. If you have a camera, you can show a close up - and the actor can act naturally. In Kannada movies, you still see those exaggerated gestures.
In a play, when two characters have a talk, they come centre-stage, finish their discussion, and then move off back-stage, with some contrived conversation closer. In a cinema you can simply show the relevant part of the conversation and then cut to the next scene. Kannada movies still haven’t discovered editing.
You’d expect that some 70 odd years of experience would have taught Kannada directors these things They haven’t. Instead, movie makers have raised imitating drama to an art form. Everytime I see a Kannada movie, I notice this ineptness. I cannot enjoy it.
Why am I ranting on Kannada movies? Because I am forced to watch Kannada serials at dinnertime and I am expressing my frustration. Because movies are an interesting example where changing the medium changes the way in which the message is delivered.
The other example is writing. Writing for the web is different from writing for paper. Online readers don’t tolerate the same amount of rambling they’d tolerate on paper. You cannot do a post that comes to the point in the sixth paragraph after rambling incoherently about Kannada movies, to give just one example.
Then there is the relationship between photography and painting, where the change went the other way round. Introduction of photography meant that end of realism in painting, and painters started painting what could not be photographed.
Are there other examples of this phenomenon?
[...] a Kannada movie was not my idea of the ideal way to spend a Sunday morning. When I last checked, directors of Kannada movies had not yet learnt to distinguish between making a movie and directing [...]