The Casual Moment
AMIT CHAUDHURI
Brick 75
For ever since we can remember, Hollywood has been not only a principal producer, but also the chief definition of popular cinema. But, in the last twenty years or so, it has become more: it has become, almost unobtrusively, a universal type. I feel this especially when I am in the DVD and video section of a book or music shop in Britain—there is cinema, and then, in a corner, there is “world” cinema. What’s happened to the adjective “world” here is striking: robbed, both physically and conceptually, of size, volume, and mastery, of the glamour it possesses in other conjunctions (“world famous,” “world class”), it has become a ghost of itself, an uncharacteristically minor term. The “world” is an obscure and down-at-the-heel Hollywood suburb, which people, these days, visit infrequently.
Posted on June 14, 2018
I always find it a bit surprising when I hear the directors and producers of Hindi films say, “This one is very good—it’s almost as good as Hollywood.” I realize it’s probably a quality of professionalism, a technical finesse, they have in mind; because, creatively, mainstream Hollywood cinema today is arguably the least interesting and most infantile cinema being made anywhere. Its success might be an object of emulation—but does it compel admiration in any other sense?