I saw 'The Imitation Game' on Alan Turig's life recently. A bit late I know but I seem to prefer watching films a little after their 'hype' has died out a bit or at least lessened. Its very difficult for me to watch and form an opinion about a film when the media and by inference people around you are full of that movie.
The hype about 'The Imitation Game' has died out a while back, especially as it came from the West, where movies are an instant consumption item and new product needs to be constantly 'hyped'/ promoted by a PR industry. I did not even know the Director or Scriptwriter's name, though looking up I did learn that the movie had received the Best Adapted Screenplay Award at the Oscars.
It's a movie facing a classical problem- you think you know everything you need to know about Alan Turig and what is the new thing that you can learn about him from the movie now. I guess in the English speaking West the problem must be even more acute as Turig is a much loved and respected figure. How does the movie solve the problem? Very simply by 'showing' all of what became Alan Turig developing in front of your eyes as an audience. Classical, simple way to do it- create drama and let the audience enjoy it.
'Steve Jobs' has the same problem, a protagonist who was a recent public figure and a figure who generated love/ hate/ adulation. So what do Aaron Sorkin/ Danny Boyle and Micheal Fassbinder do? They create just three settings where we see the protagonist in a few scenes with people close to him and his life. In these snapshots from a life, they create our impression of Steve Jobs. Going by commercial success, 'Steve Jobs' was not a successful movie, but when you watch it, hey it works beautifully. I mean you can take Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs and do a long biography for Netflix that will spread over eight or ten hours. But a two hour impression of Steve Jobs' life? For that this movie works wonderfully well.
Two completely different ways to do a cinema biography. Is one better than the other? To my mind both approaches are valid. A Steve Jobs like impressionistic movie on Alan Turig would be a problem as you don't quite know enough about him. On the other hand, a blow-by-blow account of Steve Jobs' life would be too long and complicated (as I already mentioned above). So each movie adopts a style that is appropriate to its subject.
That's what we have have to do with biopics- go into the uniqueness of the character that you'd want the biopic to convey and then a structure and style will emerge from the subject. You just need to have the faith in the process that a structure will emerge. Having said all this I now need to look at some of the recent biopics we have done in India to put matters into a perspective.
The hype about 'The Imitation Game' has died out a while back, especially as it came from the West, where movies are an instant consumption item and new product needs to be constantly 'hyped'/ promoted by a PR industry. I did not even know the Director or Scriptwriter's name, though looking up I did learn that the movie had received the Best Adapted Screenplay Award at the Oscars.
It's a movie facing a classical problem- you think you know everything you need to know about Alan Turig and what is the new thing that you can learn about him from the movie now. I guess in the English speaking West the problem must be even more acute as Turig is a much loved and respected figure. How does the movie solve the problem? Very simply by 'showing' all of what became Alan Turig developing in front of your eyes as an audience. Classical, simple way to do it- create drama and let the audience enjoy it.
'Steve Jobs' has the same problem, a protagonist who was a recent public figure and a figure who generated love/ hate/ adulation. So what do Aaron Sorkin/ Danny Boyle and Micheal Fassbinder do? They create just three settings where we see the protagonist in a few scenes with people close to him and his life. In these snapshots from a life, they create our impression of Steve Jobs. Going by commercial success, 'Steve Jobs' was not a successful movie, but when you watch it, hey it works beautifully. I mean you can take Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs and do a long biography for Netflix that will spread over eight or ten hours. But a two hour impression of Steve Jobs' life? For that this movie works wonderfully well.
Two completely different ways to do a cinema biography. Is one better than the other? To my mind both approaches are valid. A Steve Jobs like impressionistic movie on Alan Turig would be a problem as you don't quite know enough about him. On the other hand, a blow-by-blow account of Steve Jobs' life would be too long and complicated (as I already mentioned above). So each movie adopts a style that is appropriate to its subject.
That's what we have have to do with biopics- go into the uniqueness of the character that you'd want the biopic to convey and then a structure and style will emerge from the subject. You just need to have the faith in the process that a structure will emerge. Having said all this I now need to look at some of the recent biopics we have done in India to put matters into a perspective.
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