Month: February 2014

“Highway” and the 6 basic human needs

This post started out as a dissection of Imtiaz Ali’s latest “Highway”. But the smart folks at The Black Board forums gave me a completely different idea for a write-up. David Joyner started a thread on “How Movies Address 6 Basic Human Needs” and it was a worthy exercise to capture the viewing experience of “Highway” from a different light. 

About “Highway”:

Synopsis as per IMDB – Right before her wedding, a young woman finds herself abducted and held for ransom. As the initial days pass, she begins to develop a strange bond with her kidnapper.

Here’s the movie trailer with English subtitles.

“In bondage, she found freedom”

This one fired higher than my expectations

This one fired higher than my expectations

That’s pretty much all you need to know. Honestly, this wasn’t on my must-watch list. I bought the tickets hoping that A.R.Rehman’s tracks would provide some relief to a predictable story line. But in the nuanced hands of director Imtiaz Ali, the story turned out to be a completely different journey. I’m going to go out on a limb to defend the director here. A professor of film studies once told me that movies were never good or bad – they are either sold out or true their message. And that’s how I’ve been benchmarking movies all along. Highway is true to its story without giving into the trappings of commercial fare. Imtiaz Ali took a simple low-budget plot, extracted career best performances from rookies Alia Bhatt & Randeep Hooda and delivered a poignant story. Add Rehman’s ethereal soundtrack and you’ve got a magical combination that should ideally have set the box office on fire.

Few things work against giving this movie a wider appeal. There is a lazy convenience in the story’s motion to build a relationship between the protagonists. It seemed too linear for an audience who were eager to experience the complexities behind these strange decisions that pushed the lead characters together. Film critic Anupama Chopra was disappointed with the movie and she articulates my feelings correctly in her review – “Both Veera [Alia Bhatt] and Mahabir [Randeep Hooda] stayed with me. They are compelling, intriguing characters… I just wish they had met under different circumstances “

The 6 Basic Human Needs

Since the public verdict on this movie is already out, I figured Highway was the kind of cinema that would be best suited for The Black Board post. As per the theory, “the force of life is the drive for fulfillment”. In order to do this, all human behaviour is focused to meet 6 basic needs:

  1. Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure
  2. Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli (direct conflict with the first need)
  3. Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed
  4. Connection/Love: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something
  5. Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding
  6. Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others

Fortunately, David has transplanted these ideas to define the needs for a movie going audience. Narrowing our study lens to the scope of the movie Highway, I’ll try exploring which of these audience needs were touched upon.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

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THR’s Roundtable series – Television Executives

Without having read a page of their magazine, I’m a huge fan of The Hollywood Reporter. Solely due to their Roundtable discussions which they have so graciously shared it with the rest of the world on their webpage.

(Note: The Roundtable series involves some of the most talented & creative brains of our times having lengthy conversations about their works. Its a complete time-suck. Consider yourself warned!)

An important round-table discussion worth sharing is the one with Television Executives. Four senior executives from different broadcasters – each holding a unique space within the American TV industry – sat around a table (d’oh!) to discuss the changing nature of television. Here’s the entire one hour video:

For me, this discussion was such a revelation that I’ve watched it multiple times over the last few months. Today I revisited it again and spent the entire Sunday afternoon taking down 3 pages of notes. Starting with their names :

  1. John Landgraf – President, FX Networks (from the corner painted “Basic cable”)
  2. Ted Sarandos – Chief Content Officer, Netflix (representing the “Digital domain”)
  3. David Nevis – President, Showtime Networks (coming in from “Premium Cable”)
  4. Kevin Reilly – Chairman, Fox Broadcasting Company (from the “Network channels”)

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