What I learned after watching 128 movies in a year
If 2020 wasn’t weird enough already, for no reason at all I started keeping a count of the movies I would watch throughout the year. It wasn’t even a calculated decision to make a list of content I consumed during the lockdown or the forced loneliness that the pandemic hit us with. How I remember it starting is that somehow I ended 2019 with watching some really random and forgettable movies and in the new year my inner movie aficionado woke up to decide not to waste my time on ordinary mindless content. Even if I felt like watching a light hearted rom com or a feel-good movie some day, it had to be among the better ones of the category. Besides, making lists is one of my all-time favourite things to do – yes, I am that person. I am also a nostalgia fan and enjoy reliving past moments through the records I keep, so this decision seemed an absolute win to me. 128 movies later, I decided to revisit the list and check if it really was a win after all.
Firstly, I couldn’t even figure out how to comprehend the number I had ‘achieved’. Making such a list for the first time, I had no clue about the number of movies a person typically watches in a year. While writing this article I even tried googling if there was any study about the number of movies an average person watched in 2020. Among the top results was a 2018 article that said that an average Briton watches 72 movies a year. But that’s too old a result for this ‘special’ year we’ve had, so that wasn’t too helpful. I recognized that I was definitely doing something unusual when I had reached the mark of 90 movies in September and mentioned it to one of my friends, and she gasped in shock. Yesterday I told my brother about this number and I knew this wasn’t quite ordinary by the number of eye-emojis he sent me as a reply. This morning I got surer when while watching a movie review on YouTube the reviewer mentioned that he had watched around 67 movies in 2020. And then I realized that I have already watched 6 movies within the first 10 days of 2021. Either I have turned into some sort of a movie psycho, or I watched way more movies in 2019 without even realizing and have always been like this; either way I felt the situation was worth analysing.
Revisiting my movie list, I could find interesting patterns which reflected how I was feeling during various months of the year based on the movie choices I made, and also how those movies made me feel which charted the path of my future choices. The story began on the night of 01 Jan 2020 with the critically acclaimed ‘Marriage Story’, which I enjoyed immensely and which reaffirmed my decision of watching good quality cinema. My tryst with classics started with ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ where I fell in love with Audrey Hepburn and the movie re-ignited my love for nostalgia. Billie Eilish in the series of her annual Vanity Fair interview ritual always mentions her favourite movie to be ‘Fruitvale Station’ and I finally understood why. Some real diversification in my palette, I am sure like many other people across the globe, came when I watched the Oscar winning Korean movie ‘Parasite’. Talking of diversification, I must also mention that I watched 6 Marathi movies; I like to keep in touch and test my Marathi language skills. I got reminded of the politically charged months of early 2020 when I saw ‘An Insignificant Man’ in the list. Then I remembered being frustrated after watching the seemingly ordinary story of a woman Delhi Police officer in ‘Soni’, and questioning a woman’s existence through the skilful acting by Shabana Azmi in ‘Arth’. ‘Spirited Away’ marked my entrance in the magical world of Ghibli and I can confirm that it undoubtedly provides the best escapism ever. I watched ‘Interstellar’ twice in the year, after having watched it three times already at different stages of my life. Surreal experience, teary eyes – every damn time. Not all movies in the list were fresh encounters, some were revisits of some older hits. I was reminded of my all-time favourite hero SRK as I drowned myself in ‘K3G’ and ‘DDLJ’. ‘Swades’ man, teary eyes – again. I watched 1 Kannada, 1 Malayalam and 2 Tamil movies for the first time in life, and these were probably among the best of my list. I watched some of the best Hindi movies of all time – ‘Pyaasa’, ‘Shahib Biwi aur Ghulam’, ‘Shree 420’ and many others, ‘Pyaasa’ now being one of my all-time favourite movies. I watched my first Iranian movie ‘A Separation’ and was blown away by the artistry. Also fascinating was identifying words that sounded similar to Hindi as many words in Hindi find their origin in Persian. ‘Sita sings the Blues’ was the most unusual, unique and enjoyable animated documentary/film, looking at Ramayana through Sita’s perspective, her feelings expressed through songs by 1930s American Jazz singer Annette Hanshaw. Satyajit Ray’s 48-minute movie ‘Sadgati’ made my soul weep. I laughed out loud revisiting ‘Welcome’. I concluded the list by Tom Hank’s ‘Bridge of Spies’ on New Year's Eve.
I must mention that not all movies I watched were ‘art’, and I didn’t even enjoy some of them as much as I had hoped, so technically my resolution of watching quality cinema wasn’t completely fulfilled. I took my chances with ‘Motichoor Chaknachoor’ but in my defence I watched it only to watch my man Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Then there was Sonam Kapoor’s ‘Khoobsurat’, which didn’t make me ‘feel-good’ as much as the Netflix description had declared. I had started with ‘I hate love stories’ which I within first 15 minutes realized was neither in line with my resolution nor with my interests, so I stopped in time. And some like ‘Downsizing’ left me confused as to what they wanted to convey. And of course, there was ‘Chennai Express’, which I saw in my SRK phase of the year and pinned high hopes on him as to overestimate my capabilities of watching a Rohit Shetty film. First ever movie that I could only finish watching with the assistance of some really intense forwarding. But overall, thankfully I can count such movies of my list on my tips.
So now comes the time for figuring out the lessons I learnt by watching this huge pile of largely great cinematic pieces, because of course there needs to be a reason behind whatever activity we undertake, especially the ones carried out with such deliberate thought. And even if there isn’t much meaning, our pattern loving and meaning seeking brains will assign some meaning to the process anyway.
The first and probably the most important realization I developed is about the unknown ocean of artistry that we all miss just because of language or regional barriers. I was able to watch and fully enjoy the masterpiece Marathi movie ‘Court’ because I understand Marathi considerably well and Gujarati to some extent which was also in some dialogues, but it was dispiriting to think how a large chunk of even the Indian audience has kept themselves deprived of such excellent piece of work because they don’t know the language. The amount of good quality content that I have missed purely because I don’t understand Malayalam or Bengali or Tamil and don’t make the effort to reach out and find good movies irrespective of the language needs to be changed. I came to know about the reputation of Iran as being the high-quality cinema producers, and I was disappointed in me for knowing about it so late in life even after claiming to be a cinema lover for the longest time. I believe and hope that ‘Parasite’ would have changed that for many people already. Even after watching only a handful of diverse content this year, I feel like a more aware and evolved cinephile than I was a year ago.
Another thing, which I won’t say that I realised for the first time, but surely was reminded of, was the importance good cinema, or rather any such visual content, plays in shaping our views and outlook. As much as movies are primarily a source of entertainment, we often underestimate their power of influencing the way we feel and think about ourselves and the world. Sure, there are those movies that inspire you and motivate you to do better in your own lives – when you see the protagonist struggling against all odds and finally winning, you start introspecting and pushing yourself to achieve more. (‘Hidden Figures’ really made me feel like a badass woman, well at least for a couple of days). But then there are movies that make you contemplate about things and form opinions about topics that you have held opposing views for, or probably not even paid much attention to before. Movies like ‘Ship of Theseus’, that throw you into that philosophical rabbit hole pondering over the meaning of life, death and one’s identity, or ‘Pyaasa’ which proficiently demonstrates people’s selfish pursuit of a position of power, or about the realities of the quest for justice in ‘Court’ or what family might mean to different people in ‘A Separation’, or the influence of the digital world and social media on young impressionable girls in the French movie ‘Cuties’. Good cinema not only keeps us entertained, but leaves a lasting impression in our regular lives by expanding our perspective. Sure, not all cinema has the responsibility of "bringing social change" or "concluding with a message" always, but good cinema will always compel you to form some kind of opinions on the subject matter.
Another realization that I had -- and it might be a personal one; this could probably obvious to someone else -- was that how the art of cinema is truly a team work. We usually focus on the faces that we see – the actors and at best extend the scope to the directors. But imagine what could happen if the cinematographer is not able to translate the director’s vision on camera truthfully. Or if a stellar cast enunciates elementary dialogues. We have often seen cases of good films edited badly that end up with a diminished impact. Set design, the colour palette of the movie, the costumes, the score, the dialogues, the lighting, the makeup and prosthetics – each and every seemingly small and rather unseen parts of the cogwheel really keep the project running. ‘Pyaasa’ even after being a black and white oldie with technological constraints has recorded numerous top-class cinematographic moments and I believe the large number of artistic frames add to the movie’s merit which significantly contributes towards its cinematic genius. ‘Moonlight’ wouldn’t have been The ‘Moonlight’ had it not been edited masterfully. The entire team behind a movie needs way better recognition than they are currently given by the audiences.
Also, on a personal level, I realized how much I enjoyed keeping record of these ‘feats’ of 10-11 movies every month. This reminded me of those self-help videos that talk about reaffirming your achievements to yourself and remember how far you have come, which acts as a positive feedback to the process and pushes you to achieve more. So, the great realization has dawned, now the only thing left is to translate it into some productive actions in real life!
But lastly, even if this was just me assigning meaning to a random bunch of movies I saw to fulfil a random list making obsession, I’m glad I did it, because these movies kept me company in a year that was spent largely in isolation and this list would be my pandemic keepsake for the future. It has painted a visual chart of my entire year, the movies acting as time stamps -- remembering the day I watched each of them will help me recollect how I was feeling during a particular time of the year. And also, because writing about this pseudo achievement made me forget about dinner and helped me break my writer’s block. Time for some Maggie to the rescue. Movie for tonight is ‘Ponyo’.