Is there anything wrong with giving Bahubali getting the Best Picture Award? Anything wrong with Amitabh getting the best actor?

I would have expected the movie to get credits for sets, art direction, special effects and so on but not Best Picture. Then when it got best picture the thought that came to my mind is what does it mean to be the ‘best picture’. My first thought was it should be a culmination of a lot of things like direction, music score, story, acting, editing and so on. Never that of Best movie and that had more to do with my prejudice about what should win the Best Picture, and my prejudice need not be right.

So I looked at Oscars, to see if there have been cases of Mega movies winning Best picture 2003 for Lord of the rings, 2000 for Gladiator, 1997 for Titanic, 1995 for Braveheart, 1957 for Ben-Hur. 1954 had ‘King and I’ and ‘The Ten Commandments’ but the winner was ‘Around the World in 80 Days’. All of these were hugely popular movies.

But if I were to compare them with some other winners across the year like Casablanca(1941),  How Green was my valley (1941),  From Here to Eternity(1953), On the Waterfront(1954), Ernest Borgnine’s beautiful Marty(1955), The Bridge On River Kwai(1957), Lawrence of Arabia(1962) that it won over ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird”, In the heat of the Night (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), French Connection, The Godfather, Sting, One flew over the cuckoos nest, Rocky that won over ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘All the President’s Men’ , Annie Hall won over Star Wars in 1977, The marvelous Deer Hunter, Gandhi, platoon, Rain man, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump and on and on all the way to Birdman and Spotlight this year I think I have to say I do not think these big budget magnum opus movies can stand next with them.

There have been years where there were so many good movies if released in another year would have won the Best picture. Lord of the rings 1 and 2 lost to ‘The beautiful Mind’ and Chicago respectively but the 3rd one won against ‘Lost in Translation’ which for me was one of the best movies I have watched.

Traditionally in India there is a feel that the popular films do not make it to the National Awards and that might be the reason people go into the theatre and come out saying “it is very boring, like an award movie’. There is a group of people in our country who look down upon these people saying they did not like the movie because they do not have the brainy mettle to appreciate such movies. It used to border on a kind of show off in my opinion, but I am no movie critic, just a lover of the art. My tastes are personal.

As a young boy I too never liked many of the award winning movies in India, but then as I grew I was moved by many of the gems from yesteryears.I have loved watching them over and over.

I am not against Baahubali but does not seem like a movie that could win best picture in National Awards. I always felt that only movies with a strong social element can win these awards. It is not about popularity but about relevance and in that case Baahubali is not any relevant except on the work of special effects which we might see many more in coming years. Again I am not aware of all other movies that came last year or was in the radar for the jury. But I am sure that there would be many movies like Pulijanman, Vaanaprastham and others that could have been selected over Baahubali.

Now to Big B getting Award for Piku. Good movie, well acted, but not for National Award. But then I did not die when Saif Ali Khan got a National Award or when Ajay Devgan got it for the wrong Movie Zakhm.

And then I saw the news of the most popular movie Bhajrangi Bhaijaan, I had a hard time watching even a bit of that crap.

Kangana is a fine actress but my opinion did not have a National level performance in the movie.

Finally I love movies except for the ones I could not get through and Baahubali or Piku was not such, Bhajrangi Bhaaijaan was…. 🙂

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