Movies are rather life itself, with love, failures, heart breaks, opportunities, laughter and success, all mixed up together yet exciting to unfold. The question is why does life, enriched with the same elements in a bigger scenario, not entertain us equally? Why do we get cynical so often, agonise too much, laugh too little and remain glum over one thing or the other?
The reason is perhaps our own lack of vision and insight. Life seems so protracted as compared to a movie and each phase of it so dragging and tedious that we lose the magic we perceive when we watch all the phases of it unified in a movie. If we enhanced our ability to understand and envisage life as a whole, we would probably overcome our grievances sooner and welcome changes more willingly than we do with our minds stuck only on the situation we are facing at one particular time.
When asked to comment on what makes movies more agreeable than real life, people came up with some interesting responses to offer. According to Ayesha, a Pakistani Canadian, people enjoy anything or everything as long as it's not something close to home. It's similar to people gossiping about others' lives. They have the freedom to analyse everything from an outsider's perspective. They can be totally judgmental, opinionated and unjust in the process; and no one is usually hurt.
Maha, a university student, thinks that the majority among us have become mechanically stimulated robots. We present the perfect example of the carrot and stick theory we used to study and laugh over in history classes back in O' levels. Nowadays, everyone seems so engrossed in struggling for the big stuff, the so-called 'aim' of life, that we tend to ignore the little happiness around us. Thus we end up getting more baffled and lost than ever.
Another student, Mariam feels that life is a totally different thing and nothing close to movies. People enjoy movies because they make them forget about their problems and take them into a world where they are watching someone else struggling for something and in the end when they get it, it inspires the viewers to achieve their goals in life too. Yet real life is much more complicated and unkind.
Ali, a doctor, strongly believes in enjoying life completely. He says, “Every day, every minute is a story for me, a film in the making. And I try to finish these stories with a happy ending. Life mostly does not let one make his own film, but one can always try to modify the ending to a better one.” On the contrary, Anis, a graduate student living on his own, considers life to be a tricky situation with things going wrong all the time. Movies bless us with an opportunity to visualise what we usually dream about. Kiran adds “Movies are a good source of entertainment because they are far from reality. We should not expect anything as dramatic to happen in real life.”
Opinions vary and so do the struggles and stresses that every individual comes across in his or her lifetime. Life indeed is not as pleasant for every one and all may not end well as it mostly does in the movies, but that is what life is all about “Not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next,” (Gilda Radner).
Life is as beautiful as we choose to believe. We may snivel and fret over not having one thing, or we may celebrate the presence of everything else with us. In the end, it is all a matter of choice but once we begin to appreciate the unfolding of the real life episodes, we might as well become more positive about life than the tricks in movies!
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