“The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.”
― Richard Price
As I sat in church in penance for my sins, I reflected on the current state of cinema as any aficionado would, and it made me realize that mainstream films in India have never had villains who were terrible for the sake of being evil. They have never been seen to commit heinous crimes. The world's cruelties have always been censored, lest they fall into the eyes of someone who could be exploited by the truthfulness of reality.
I thought about scenes from films that I have come to adore were filmmakers who were so well-versed in the form of their art, they created something so utterly unique that they could brandish it as their own. The first person who came to mind was Quentin obviously. I could describe him as many things: a revolutionary, a visionary, a standalone artist in an arena of lost copycats. I think of Quentin as a passionate lover of truth. Cinema is the truth of life 23.976 times a second.
The more I thought about this, the more I realized how I want my writing to change. I have been having this realization that my idea of scene staging and what makes a scene tick has been wrong. I spent too much time making scenes dialogue proficient and making sense out of meaning already. Let me explain: if I tell you that someone is a bad person, yes you would believe me. Because I'm telling you so, you may still take it with a grain of salt. Now picture this, I tell you nothing about this person but tell you I'm mildly uncomfortable to get you to meet them, you're intrigued and you ask me what's it about them that makes me feel that way. I tell you they scare me. Now you want to know in what way, but I don't tell you that. I take you to them, you look at this person and they're nice, charming even; witty. They say things just the right way, just at the right time. You don't understand some of their witty remarks and you chalk it up to them being a bit quirky. You let it go. A few minutes later this person calls upon someone, now you may not know this person, he might be a subordinate to this guy or maybe someone really close to him, you're trying to put together the puzzle and you see the guy I've introduced you to talking to this fellow very sweetly. He's asking him questions. The other guy's not making eye contact but he answers all questions as clearly as he can. You think our guy is a wholesome guy. But things take a turn, in the middle of their conversation, he takes the trembling fellow's head and bashes it into the table you three have been sitting at, you're stunned. How can someone so charming be so ruthless, so unpredictable? You're looking at me why didn't I tell you before. Now you remember me telling you, how uncomfortable this guy made me feel. Now you know. And you're completely terrified. Now you know. He's bad.
3 minutes of hard thinking bought me to this, if I had to show someone losing their religion instead of telling you that I could just show myself sitting during mass as the father gives his important life lessons during the sermon. I could be looking at a tuft of hair on the ground. Just floating. What could be the meaning of that? I don't know. You attach meaning as you see fit. But you know it means a certain disconnect. From religion, or from reality that's up to you. There are 3 people at a table discussing who hurt their partner and they're deciding how violent they want their retaliation upon their suppressors to be they realize their conspiracy can be heard, so they decide to move elsewhere but instead of getting up right away, they get into an argument about how much do they tip the waiter? These are the truths of life. The truths I want to depict in my films. The way I imagined my taste in cinema to be. I want to be the tuft of hair floating about boisterously with the freedom to move beyond the confines of the church's wooden plank benches. I wish that I have the freedom to depict my truth.
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