The many faces of love in cinema

The many faces of love in cinema

Love is the stuff of which many of the cinemas are made of. Most of the cinemas are expressions of or delineation of the feeling that runs through our arteries which is engulfing us like a flame. I remember looking for all the music shops in madras for Schubert`s unfinished symphony after reading Kurosowas autobiography. Finally I have landed with a piece conducted by Karajan. In those days if I hadn’t come across Schubert it would have been  one of the greatest day of disappointment  for me. What is for me Schubert and Kurosowa.  His last lines if you do love them have your hands clapped raised in me an unnatural feel of the love he had portrayed. So was a very short film by Jean Renoir in a summer night  or so or Doctor Zhivago. The last scene in which Zhivago goes after Laura in a railway station in Russia has always been etched in my memory. Cinema has always reinvented love ,the way we love the way we live, the way civilization go forward. Theres is in Sarjevo where the lovers of different faith tryng to escape the mass anger and crushed by the border.One of the finest love stories I have watched is based on the ethnic conflict there

 But as we grow old and new millennium draws it seems we have become more diffident and less revolting. If we look at the new symbols of love we would be appalled by the conformism it preaches the ephemeral quality it ends its own lethargic stupefying presence in the wide screen It is more peripheral it is more skin deep and doesn’t have the real feel to touch the barriers time caste creed and age has set in

Consider the portrayal of love in Malayalam cinema

The 1954 film Neelakuyil has brushed aside the old feelings of caste and religion and more forthcoming in its revolutionary them . An upper caste man loving a dalith girl the mesmerizing act of miss kumari and Sathyan set to Raghavans music and Janamma Davids words through p bhaskarans lyrics Even after half a century it remains the cannon around which love would be measured It was revolutionary brve and path breaking

The same ethos was continued in chemmeen even though it was more a pop art than avant garde film. That a woman could abandon her husband and could look for her lover even though it is against the laws of the sea ( an aberration done by the writer) it was revolutionary .Kallichellamma went one step ahead .a true change in the gender perspective

But what do we have now?

Love guaranteed by parents and solemnized by the caste and religion more institutionalized by creed and ideas retrograde experiments which may bring in moolah

Does our new film makers have tallest the courage of KG George or Padmarajan or even Adoor /

Actually what we do see nowadays is a corruption of our tastes bringing in the ingredients of tamil pop culture which fantasies on unnatural feelings and retrograde ideas.

Do we fail to recognize love and portray love as it happens or do we give away ourselves to cynical sentimentalism and say it is reflective of the times

When Juliet said

~where art thogh Romeo

deny they father and refuse thy name ~

history of love was made but when it is being trivialized it might bring in moolah but is a travesty of love