Movies for constructive purpose, rather destructive !!

A scene from My Name Is Khan

The other day, I was watching this movie called “My Name is Khan”. Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol paired, directed by Karan Johar movie can only be expected as to be one of his typical romantic comedy emotional dramas. Surprisingly this time the movie base is quite different than his other movies. The trio gave the Indian Movie lovers some movies like Kuch Kuch Hota Hain, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum. So, though the title was fascinating, I was almost sure that this movie would also be some typical romantic drama. Otherwise, I anticipated it would be something on Terrorism Issues in US. Well yes the movie is about the Terrorism Issue but it had some different element in it, which makes it distinct, and yet another great work of this trio. The movie portrays a simple Muslim Autistic man getting married to a Hindu divorced woman and the consequences for having the Muslim title “Khan” after 9/11. Somebody who didn’t watch the movie might think that the movie is all about Islam and Terrorism, and then I would say, it’s not. The movie is about humanity, peace and identity. Though, MNIK has some unrealistic scenes which justifies the Indian movie makers in their place. However, the movie is successful to pass a real and true message to the world. The message of Islam, that Islam is a religion of Peace and Humanity. In this modern age, India is giving the society some playful entertaining yet Patriotic movies like Rang De Basanti, Lage Raho Munna Bhai and movies on serious Terrorism issue like New York. Indian Media is growing stronger and they tend to focus on different issues of life and world. This is about Indian Cinema.

Third Person Singular Number

Let’s review our Movie Industry. Some of the latest classy movies of Bangladesh are – Third Person Singular Number, Monpura. Both movie did quite well in Bangladesh and became popular among Bangladeshi educated youngsters. Yes I said, educated!! This is a very cruel truth but the real scenario of Bangladesh Movie Industry is, most bangla movies are made to entertain the lower income uneducated society. The context of movie, the story and the plot are mostly focused to that target group. Unfortunately, an uprising and creative Director like Mostafa Sarwar Farooki who made commendable movies like “Bachelor” once, comes with a movie like “Third Person Singular Number”. Bachelor negatively criticized the modern upbeat young generation of Dhaka. On the contrary, TPSN criticized how woman faces problem when she dares to stay alone in our society. As I am biased towards woman freedom, so this part of the story convinced me. But, the other part of the movie about living relationships in Dhaka is the vicious part that a director should show in a Bangladeshi context. I believe there are many other woman issues which can be portrayed in a movie. As an under developed country like Bangladesh, are we really prepared to accept the “living relationship” concept? Moreover, a movie is one of the strongest motivational audio-visual medium among public. The public is going to take it, the after effect can be either positive or negative.

My point of elaborating from Indian to Bangladeshi movie is the comparison of the quality, the scope and range of two countries movie industry. India has come a long way, they are showing movies on Homosexuality, Living Relationships, Terrorism, Woman Rights and Patriotism. My argument is, why am I taking only the negative part of another culture? Our country has lot of issues which is not given necessary focus. Our well known directors like Farooki might take those issues seriously! I feel Patriotism is one issue that should be strongly shown in a different way in this modern context, apart from Liberation War. Today’s Bangladesh society is way back from the other countries of the world. Bangladesh is still struggling with basic needs like Food, Shelter and Education. 40-30% of the educated society is controlling the country. Among this educated society, 20% might be the younger generation, who usually get to see movies like TPSN. The young generation who watch this movie will eventually start to think staying alone and start for a living relationship. On the other hand, this younger generation can easily be influenced towards constructive effort by showing and reminding patriotism in the movies. Today’s patriotism is not the Liberation War of 1971. We have long passed those years. Today’s fight is to struggle and make our country stand in the world with the equal benchmark like India. Our country is recognized as one of the corrupted nation in the world. Every morning when I come to school and start my working day, I sit in the middle of many other teachers criticizing our country ruling system, corruption, incidents. Every bangla channel has at least 2-3 talk-shows on many serious issues of our country. To be honest, I don’t understand what they keep on talking about!! And to me, I even don’t understand why are they talking on these issues and showing those on TV. If the audience don’t understand the discussion then what is the point of showing it?

The bottom-line is, instead of having talk-shows on TV, our media needs to make some motivational movies to inspire the generation. India being a neighboring country, has improved 100 times than us. The underlying motto of their improvement is, instilling Patriotism in the core of every Indian’s heart!! Why can’t we do this? Why our movie makers are more interested on making movies on issues like Living Relationships, multiple Love Affairs? So, instead of copying the Indian culture into our movies, our movie makers should come up with some stories which can motivate our people and make them love our country. Movies for constructive purpose, rather destructive !!

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