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Thursday, November 09, 2006
Melodrama and realism
There is a common impression that something that is melodramatic can't be realistic. Jai Arjun Singh points out in an excellent post that this isn't necessarily so.
Of course, there's nothing quite as grotesque as melodrama taken to an extreme: two films that showcase good and bad melodrama respectively are Parineeta and Devdas -- as I'd written here. That's subjective, of course, but if you disagree I'm going to wail and cry. So there.
[C]inematic “realism” is a chimerical thing at the best of times. A very basic example: a scene where a man beats his chest and wails loudly in the face of tragedy might seem melodramatic, even unrealistic, to a viewer who doesn’t believe in showy displays of emotion in public. But different people have different realities: what’s being depicted in that scene might be completely consistent with the way that character would react in that situation. All that matters is the consistency with which the film depicts a specific, self-contained world.Indeed, I'm half-Bengali, and so much melodrama travelled in my genes that hardly anything else fit in. People of some countries do tend to express their emotions more than others -- you see this in a lot of Italian and Indian cinema, and hair-tearing, shriekacious Italian moms seem so much like Bong mas. If the cinema reflects this, that's realism.
Of course, there's nothing quite as grotesque as melodrama taken to an extreme: two films that showcase good and bad melodrama respectively are Parineeta and Devdas -- as I'd written here. That's subjective, of course, but if you disagree I'm going to wail and cry. So there.
