I watch films every day. Not as a habit, more like a hunger. Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, whatever language I can follow. Korean, Japanese, whatever I find at 1 AM because one shot in a trailer looked like it meant something.
People talk about cinematography, direction, performances, costumes. I care about all of it. But none of it matters if a film doesn't make me feel something. That's the only thing I'm really watching for.
“If the feeling isn't mine, the opinion isn't either.”
Watch this closely for this long, and you stop watching for entertainment. You start watching for the exact moment a film decides to go for your chest instead of your head.
Here are two that did it to me recently.
Marathi · Social Drama
NUDE (2018)
Pulled from IFFI's opening slot over “vulgarity.” Won Best Film at NYFF the same year. That gap is the whole film.
Most films treat art like something pure, something that lifts people up. Nude doesn't buy that. Here, art is just a transaction. And the person paying the highest price never chose to be part of it.
Yamuna poses nude at an art college in Mumbai. She's not an artist. She doesn't do it because she believes in the human form, or beauty, or any of that. She does it because her son needs a future, and this is what pays. To the students, her body is just a subject. To the professors, it's a teaching tool. To the institution, it's a line in a budget. Nobody in that room is thinking about her son.
Yamuna never becomes a symbol. That's Jadhav's biggest strength as a director. She's a specific person, in a specific city, making a specific calculation every morning. The film earns its devastation because it never asks you to admire her, only to see her clearly.
- Director
- Ravi Jadhav
- Language
- Marathi
- Genre
- Social Drama
- Award
- Best Film, New York Film Festival
Korean-American · Drama
PAST LIVES (2023)
No villain. No dramatic obstacle. No third-act crisis. Just two people who already know they can't be together, and twenty years of what that does to them.
Nora left Seoul. Hae Sung stayed. That's the whole film. And somehow, by the end, it destroys you.
The final scene is everything. Nora watches Hae Sung's cab disappear, and then she collapses, not dramatically, the way people actually collapse when something they've held together for years finally gives way. She isn't really crying about Hae Sung. She's crying about the version of herself that stayed in Seoul, the girl who would have loved him.
What makes this film remarkable is that it admits something most love stories won't. Moving on is real, and it costs something. Song never judges either of them. She just shows you what choices look like from the inside.
- Director
- Celine Song
- Genre
- Korean-American Drama
- Award
- Academy Award Nominee, Best Picture
