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Chaitanya Tamhane's 'Court' and Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar': A Study of 'Theme-Based' Filmmaking


Couple of days ago, in the space of 6 hrs, I watched Chaitanya Tamhane's 'Court' and Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' back to back. The one element that's common to the making of both these 'powerful' film is that they both are directed by young, enterprising filmmakers who challenge the conventional wisdom of their respective film-fraternity. 'Court' is the debut feature film of Director Chaitanya Tamhane and this film has been loved the world over by prominent film critics. American publications such as 'Variety', 'The Hollywood Reporter' and 'New York Post' have praised the mockumentary style of film-making inhibited by Chaitanya for 'Court' and it's indeed a slow-burning film which at two-hour length will make you feel more uncomfortable than pleasant. It discusses a 'petty' court case throughout its course and in-between you will find instances that make you both wince and wink. But If you would like me to call it an entertaining film, I would not for I waited and waited for some hardcore action (such moments are a must-have characteristic for hard-hitting films like "Court') but I didn't find my eureka moment. This film is certainly disturbing, it would make you feel very uncomfortable and I got it after watching it why it's been praised so effusively by Western Media for 'Court' reminded them of the golden era of Hollywood (that's 60s) where Hollywood churned out theme-based movies with a consistent efficiency. This would help us understand why 'Court' was pitched so fervently and ultimately chosen for India's official nomination for Oscars.

I cannot forget the euphoria created by 'Interstellar' release. Christopher Nolan must have experienced the same high with 'The Dark Knight Rises' release. Fans' sentiments have always been very strong for Nolan's films and there is a reason behind it. Fans know that finally they have got a filmmaker that has not only got major-studios' backing for his 100 million dollar movies but also audience support by making 'intelligent' films that test and challenge their knowledge level. People are still knocking themselves out over Inception's ending. Only Steven Spielberg before Nolan was able to come up with such innovative, brilliant ideas for his summer blockbusters. 'Minority Report and Close Encounters of Third Kind' are two of the finest neo-noir science fictions that Hollywood has come out so far and even 'Gravity' and now 'Interstellar' couldn't manage to topple them. Like the 'The Dark Knight Rises', Interstellar too was bogged down with two many ambiguous ideas and we are not even counting the many technical cliches that Interstellar exhibited. The concepts of 'Tesseract', 'Wormhole', '5-D', 'Interplanetary Life', 'Super-massive Black Hole', 'Gravity', 'Dilated Time', 'Morse Code' and 'Interstellar' were too much to stomach down for not only critics and fans but even for many theoretical physicists. Still, it managed to score with audience the world over and minted more than USD 675 Million on Box-Office. The reason: it had a very strong family theme and one scene was particularly amazing where Matthew Mcconaughey's character up over in the stars watch his children age more than 23 years in the space of 3 hrs of 'space exploration' and couldn't manage to hold over his tears which flow effortlessly from his eyes. He feels helpless but a strong yearning of meeting his beloved daughter again make him break all the scientific barriers which at a time seemed unbelievably impossible. That's the film-making of highest imaginable quality.

So as we see here, themes are an important aspect of film-making and from where I see it, Both 'Court' and 'Interstellar' manage to find one and make it 'graceful'. No doubt, audiences and critics graced them too.............#IAmDone..........#NakedEmotions

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