Has Breaking Records Become The New Trend?

There was a time when the success of movies depended on the number of days they ran in the theatres and the number of theatres they were screened in. Atleast, that was a genuine parameter to say that the films had enough content and quality to pull the crowds. But with passing time, the trend has changed.

Cinema is no longer about entertainment, that factor has taken the backseat and it is now a business. So, just about anyone who has money can walk in and start making a film.

The prime parameter for success has become the ability to break records and create news ones. And it doesn’t take long for this to happen. All gets decided right on the first day of release ie in the form of collections and the number of theatres the film releases in. The basic ingredients such as the storyline, the actors, technical crew, all those things dont matter anymore. One gets to focus on those things only when the film gets into the second week of running.

This record mania is a very common trend in Tollywood. It is all about who created what and who broke what. For example, the Mahesh Babu starrer ‘Pokiri’ created several records. From then on, all the big budget films which came after ‘Pokiri’ had only one objective, “How to break Pokiri’s record?”. True to their desires came ‘Magadheera’. This film wiped out the records set by ‘Pokiri’ and created its own. Now, every other big budget movie that comes takes ‘Magadheera’ as the reference.

While that was happening, the dubbed films from Kollywood came as a big threat to Tollywood. With films like ‘Awara’ ‘Rangam’ in the fray, the Kollywood flicks took over the Tollywood box office. Luckily, ‘Dookudu’ came like a breath of fresh air in Tollywood. It started setting new records and the daily collections were splashed all over, which added further hype. Now, the time has come for ‘Oosaravelli’ and since the festival was around, it added to the pre-release publicity.

But amidst all this hype and noise, few questions of truth stare right into our face. Is a film only about the expected collections? Is success all about figures? Can a cinema not be defined by its message and what sort of impact it is creating on the audience? Is there something called decent cinema? Well, this is something I find hard to locate these days. Just a thought friends…