My taste is better than yours

Ritesh Batrarsquos The Lunchbox 2013 is a nice film But the end is very upsetting Thanks to a misplaced dabba a middleaged widower and a neglected housewife exchange notes The friendship that develops is touching because in those short notes they share more of their soul than they do with the people around them It builds up to attraction and just when it seems that they will meet the film ends rather ambivalently What happens next is left to your imagination lsquoThat is cheatingrsquo was my grumpy thought while leaving the theatre Most critics have loved The Lunchbox unabashedly None of them thought that the lack of closure in the film shortchanges the audience in anyway Maybe it doesnrsquot but hear me outu00a0There is general disdain for closure or consummation in this case the knowledge of whether the two met or did not meet among most people critiquing the arts It stems from an intellectual arrogance that finds the whole idea of a linear or a nonabstract narrative lsquoplebeianrsquo Perfect ending Why is liking a nonlinear narrative or a film without closure become such a badge of intellectualism A couple of weeks back Amy a very intelligent scientist and a character on the American show The Big Bang Theory was taking the obsessive Sheldon through some neurological exercises designed to rid him of his need for closure These included playing half finished games such as dominoes or a jigsaw puzzle This drove Sheldon nuts After days of this he waits till Amy is out of the house before playing a full game of dominoes and collapses in almost orgasmic relief when the last domino falls He is an annoying character but in that moment you feel for the guy There is no harm in people liking stories without closure Similarly there is no harm in them liking stories that have closure It is when either side makes a virtue out of it that things get murkier And across the board film critics make a virtue of their love for a nonlinear narrative ideally without song and dance Baz Luhrmannrsquos Moulin Rouge and Danny Boylersquos Slumdog Millionaire are arguably the only exceptions Last month I finally watched Anurag Kashyaprsquos Gangs of Wasseypur GoW 1 and 2 What I like about Kashyap is his enthusiasm and the fact that he experiments and tries to push boundaries Though audiences and critics love him except perhaps for Black Friday I am not into his cinema It is too selfindulgent for me But I sat through GoW and enjoyed it too It is a documentary about hatred and rivalry that spills across generations It is extremely wellmade the casting is bang on Nawazuddin Siddiqui Manoj Bajpai Richa Chaddha and Tigmanshu Dhulia are outstanding The film is worth watching simply to see their performances But when you switch off your TV screen reeling from the blood and gore you realise that there really is really no story When I mentioned this to a film critic friend he did not agree Nor do most critics who had given it a huge thumbs up Some of them promised to educate me in cinema appreciation GoW did find an audience in India and overseas This proves once again that there is a market for all kinds of films and creative thought That is the whole point of being different people different things appeal to each one of us But the attitude of lsquowhat appeals to me is in much better taste than what appeals to yoursquo creates an undemocratic discussion around creative fields It becomes even more skewed if this opinion is held by a majority of the people critiquing the arts in mass media It isolatesa whole lot of people who want to read or see a discussion on their favourite films from someone who is not sneering at them but is analysing them For instance till the late nineties and the early part of this millennium popular Indian cinema was looked down upon by most critics especially in the English media It is when the English and French academics made a profession out of studying Indian cinema that it got respectability in the country of its origin That is true for television programming too Anything that was aired on popular channels was termed as regressive But the fact is that those shows empowered an entire generation of rural and smalltown India which live in a milieu that is different from ours It took two economists from outside of India to prove it The writer is a media specialist and author Follow her on twitter at httptwittercomvanitakohlik u00a0