Watch More Cinema

I don't know what you think about movies.

For most people, it's entertainment—a way to escape their life for an hour or so.

For most people, the theatre is not their home. It’s just another hangout place.

For most people, it’s not curiosity that drives them to the theatre. It’s just the FOMO created around a movie.

But for some of us, including me, cinema is much more than that.

I can safely say that there hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought about cinema since I was 17. So, I often ask myself—why is it so dear to me?

There is one simple answer: I love watching movies.

And there is another one that’s not so simple. Today, I want to talk about those complicated reasons.

Empathy

When I first learned about the LGBTQ+ community, my initial reaction was weirdness and shock. Like, “Oh, people like that also exist in our world.” And it’s understandable, given I was new to the topic.

Over time, I researched more to clear out the weirdness. I saw one side completely denying LGBTQ+ identities and another side claiming there are 100 genders. But despite all my research, the weirdness never went away.

Then I watched one TV show—Brooklyn Nine-Nine—and it changed everything. I saw Captain Holt as a person who is gay but is not defined by that. He has his personality, motivations, quirks, and a way of viewing the world. It made me empathize with the LGBTQ+ community more than any research I had done. And I know it’s not a movie, but that’s just one example of how a visual medium can change you for the better.

I think I have grown more empathy for the people of my own country through Swades. I have grown empathy for rich brats by seeing someone like Sid from Wake Up Sid. I have grown endless empathy for someone who is dying through Anand. I have grown empathy for the poor through Masaan. And I can keep going.

Cinema helps you see so many worlds that you start seeing people through the lens of empathy and non-judgment. You understand people better because there is no moral filter. They like you better because you let them be who they are. And that’s a much better world to live in—where people can be themselves with others from different backgrounds because mutual empathy bonds them.

Philosophy

I remember the time I used to watch movies purely for entertainment—like Dabangg, Yamla Pagla Deewana, and whatnot.

But one day, while I was struggling with the idea of God, I randomly stumbled upon Life of Pi, where Irrfan Khan answered whether God exists. I didn’t fully understand what God is, but the movie explored the question so beautifully that I was hooked on cinema for life. And then I got deeper into the philosophical implications of movies.

You can learn a lot of philosophy just by analyzing any Christopher Nolan movie. Indian movies are also deeply philosophical, but you need to watch the right ones—like Silsila, Pyaasa, Swades, etc.

Reading philosophy is great, but you won’t truly understand it until you see it play out in your own life or stories. You only have one life, but through cinema, you can live many.

Psychology

From Breaking Bad's Walter White to The Dark Knight's Batman.

From a complex character like Joker to even a simple character like Chandler from Friends.

Every character out there has taught me something about psychology.

I can read Jean Piaget’s constructivism or Jung’s idea of the Shadow, but I won’t fully understand them until I see them in a story. Cinema is those stories.

I love psychology now, but I never got into it because I wanted to do marketing, read minds, or exploit vulnerabilities. I just wanted to understand characters better. And I don’t know when I went from watching characters to actually reading academic psychology, I just never realised it.

Taste

Movies develop taste, and that helps in any creative endeavour. Most creative people I’ve met have a strong taste in at least one thing—books, music, movies, anything.

And movies have everything—storytelling, visuals, music, framing, lighting, literally everything.

To develop taste, you have to watch better movies. And to watch better movies, you have to go through the bad ones first. That’s how you understand what is good and what is bad. You have to get opinionated, and a little pretentious at first.

But then one day, you get to a stage where you understand that some movies are really good but not for everyone, and some movies are really bad, yet everyone watches them.

Understanding taste becomes synonymous with understanding people.

Abstraction

When you watch a lot of movies, you start comparing them. And you begin to see patterns—that’s what abstraction is.

Like how Brahmāstra is basically Harry Potter, but the execution made it worse. One is the most-sold book after the Bible, and the other is just... well, bad. Even though they have the same story, why does one work and the other fail?

You begin to see what clicks with people and what doesn’t. You abstract the common themes—what works and what doesn’t. And then you can use that understanding in your writing, marketing, and any creative endeavour.

Creativity

Creativity is just taking abstractions and breaking the pattern by doing something different with the material.

That’s why I hate modern art—it suggests that anyone can do anything and then claim, “This is creativity.” Like sticking a banana on a wall and saying it represents something. Or throwing buckets on the floor and calling it a critique of capitalism. That’s not art. That’s just pretending to do something intentionally when you didn’t.

To be a creator, you have to get a deep understanding of creative stuff and then its rules. And once you understand the rules, you can break them in a smart way. That’s what real creativity is—knowing when and how to break the rules to show people something new. You can go haywire and accidentally make something good but you won’t be able to repeat it.

It all goes back to Austin Kleon: You have to steal like an artist. But even stealing the right things takes time, and “nakal ke liye bhi akal chahiye.”

So yeah, that’s why cinema is really important. So, please go out and watch movies—especially if you’re in a creative field. Make your life a little better. Make your taste a little better. Understand people, understand movies, understand narratives, understand storytelling—understand everything. All with just some money and two hours of your time, while being entertained.