My Favourite Movies

Movies are a perfect visual medium through which our senses like hearing and vision experiences a different world.

There are multiple benefits and impacts of good movies that are left on societies and cultures, these include individual impact and social/cultural impact.

Movies help us in number of ways cheif among is to understand our own lives, the lives of those around us, and how our societies and cultures work. Movies create a shared experience by impacting our ever changing attitudes and newly formed opinions.

How we interact with a movie or how it interacts with us depends upon number of factors.

But having said that, liking a particular movie doesn't mean that it will necessarily have a great impact on contemporary culture, politics or social behaviours, sometimes a movie can touch your soul without doing anything that's above mentioned.

Here's a list of movies that have a place in my soul.


1) Barfi

Barfi is a urdu/hindi word for Candy. Barfi is a popular candy in all of South Asia. The movie tells of a story a young man who is mute and deaf but he's nonetheless full of life and energy. The boy is collequaly known as 'Barfi'. Barfi falls in love with a girl who's forced to marry a 'normal' guy due to societal pressures and impulse of living a normal life.
Years later their faith's criss cross but the girl finds out that 'Barfi' is already married to a autistic girl. She's caught between two worlds, a world of normalcy but no love and the world of chaos wheres her heart truly lives. Film essentially becomes a love triangle at this point. Throughout the movie there's a narration and non linear plot that spices up the things for the audiences.

Apart from its unique plot and beautiful composed music, movie is shot in remote place in India, showing beauty and life.

Third things I like about this movie is that it doesn't freezes expression of love is not bound to any physical attributes like health, wealth, communication skills and many other things. Love happens from heart and its there that it resides.

This movie is essentially shows a period of life crisscrossing between worlds of normalcy and world of differently abled, showing countless moments of love, laugh and sorrow.

For me what makes this movie memorable and one of my favorite is that each of moment is written exceptionally well with some brilliant acting performances.

Inshort, Everything about this movie is top notch.

2) Dead Poet's Society

This movie is all about motivation, and doing what's in your heart regardless of what the world tells you. The movie tells a story of a elite boarding school for boys with strict hierarchy and discipline. A young boys is sent to this school who's elder brother has already passed out and he was also a class topper, so there's added pressure on the main character. This young boy is a shy individual who's not interested in normal educational circulum like sciences but finds himself interested in arts and literature. When he's in this elite boarding school, he finds a young bright student who's good with his studies but his father is a over bearing and alpha male type of a character. A New English teacher at the school pushes his pupil (that include before mentioned students among many other) to go against the status quo and follow their passions.

The movie in its core gives a anti confimaty message. There are many memorable dialogue and phrases that have made their place in mind of people forever.
Perhaps none of them have had a more of cultural impact than are 'O Captain, My Captain' and 'Size The Day' or as it is known in Latin 'Carpe Diem'.

There's a philosophical and psychological aspect to this movie to as this movie also demonstrates how oppression leads to revolution and movements of mass change from within.

What makes this movie special to me is that it's breaks down artificially constructed hierarchies with pure passion and true love that the characters have.


3) What's Eating Gilbert Grape

The central point of this movie is 'Personal Responsibility' and how it can hampers one individual growth ,ambition and progress.

The plot of a movie revolves around a 17 year old boy who's in love with a girl but his attention his diverted to take care of his younger brother who's mentally disabled and his mother who's obese and thus has mobility issues. On the top of all that the main characters has to do a low wage job to make ends meet for his family survival.

This move has a special place in my heart beacuse of its core message, which is essentially a positive outcome out of very unfortunate circumstances and this is only achieved through sheer determination and compasion shown character in the movie.

4) Arrival

This movie is the most recent movie on this list.

Arrival is a movie about intricacies of human language and human perception of reality.
Movie tells of a story of a Linguist who's charged with leading a team who's mission is to develop a functioning system/protocol to communicate with aliens. Various countries have established and devised their own respective team for the same purpose. There's a huge mis-communication between several governments that risk a all out global war.

Arrival takes the basic template of the story of "First Contact with Extraterrestrial Life" and makes it a stimulating and unique visual spectacle and thoughtful about what it means to be human. Arrival examines how we handle time, memory, existence, and loss-even if it hasn't happened yet. In short Arrival is a story of human mortality told through a unique and different lesnse.

To me what makes this movie special and my personal favourite is how well makers of this movie have executed a trope topic like first contact with alien life forms. And secondly I absolutely love how many topics and areas of my interest this movie covers from language, psychology, personal grief and philosophical undertones by characters being aware of their own eventual death.