Cooking an art movie

Yesterday, saw a post in infyblogs about the ingredients of a horror movie. That inspired me to think on what are the main rules that make up an art movie[or better known under the pet name of award movies].

Rule No.1-The editor is always on bench during the production of the movie. He's only there for the sake of an editor's name in the credit roll. For example, in a movie that I saw recently, there was a crippled child walking along a long road. The scene went on for almost 4 minutes with the whole walking distance being shown on screen.

Some art movie editors are known to do part time job as barbers because they hate a day without cutting.

Rule No.2-Rate of dialogue delivery is one word per minute. In case of a full sentence, you may have to wait for anything from 5 to 30 minutes.

Rule No.3-Words are best left unsaid. For conveying important matters, words are never used. A meaningful glance is enough. Sometimes this can be in varied forms like utterances of "mmmmmmm","aaahaaaa", "aarggghhh", "huhhhh", "aaah","ooooh","ohooo" etc.

Rule No.4-This is a kind of corollary for rule no.3. Speak lots of sentences about obvious and mundane things.
For example-Take the following dialogue between artan and arty


Artan(coming towards arty who is brushing her teeth.Reaches near her after a 5 minute walk)-"I think you are brushing your teeth."[As if a toothbrush inside your mouth is meant for something else]

Arty(slowly raising her face which takes another 2 minutes)-"Yes, I have the habit of brushing my teeth every morning."[Only she has that habit]


Rule No.5-Background music is mostly slow and depressing. The pivotal scenes are usually silent.

Rule No.6-Cameraman is the man getting to sleep the most on the sets. He needs to move the camera only once or twice during the whole shoot.

Rule No.7-The theme of the movie mostly deals with the lower strata of the soceity. There will be lots of scenes of sufferings of one way or the other.

Rule No.8-The actors are the most patient people you can find anywhere in the world[Next to the viewers i.e.]. They should be able to sit for long hours without a single movement, leave alone doing anything. Those who have done tableau in school can shine a lot in this field.

Rule No.9-Forces of nature like wind,rain,sunshine and creatures like dog,cat,crow,eagle get almost the same screen space[sometimes even more] as the lead actors.

Rule No.10-There is no beginning and there is no ending. The movie will be just like saying "and life goes on".


Inspite of all this, I've seen some really touching art house movies that will always be in my list of all time favourite movies.

your crusader Praveen