The Pakeezah Effect

There has been a lot of talk about The Dark Knight and how great a movie it is; so much so that it even occupied #1 position in IMDB's Top 250 List for a pretty long time and Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker began to be considered one of the finest ever in the history of cinema.

Well now let me put it straight. The Dark Knight is no way one of the greatest films of all-time. It does not even deserve to be in the Top 250 List, let alone Top 10. And yeah, Heath Ledger was good ... no, he was very good, but honestly, one of the best ever? Get real.

I guess people should watch films from all decades to actually gauge what a great film really is. It is only when you've seen cinema emerge that you will be able to accurately distinguish a good film from a great one.

In my honest opinion, The Dark Knight comes nowhere close to Superman (1978), which as all critics too might admit, is probably still the best superhero film ever made.

Now, all this hype about the movie and one particular actor is not something that was unexpected. Nor is it something unseen before.

Indian movie buffs might remember a similar situation which took place in 1972. The year Pakeezah was released. The year it was declared a huge box-office success. The year fans fell in love with the film as well as lead character. The year a classic was born. Also the year Meena Kumari passed away. Just a few weeks before the release of the film.

Now, anybody who has seen Pakeezah will say that it was a very well-made film - beautifully shot, some amazing performances, soulful music, eye-pleasing dances and some of the best dialogues ever written and heard-of. But calling Pakeezah one of the best films of all time, so much so that it features on almost any worldwide list of Best Films of All Time? I mean, I know it is a FANTASTIC movie, but surely there must be atleast 300 films from across the world that must be better than it!

So what, you may ask, is the reason for films like Pakeezah and The Dark Knight creating such a rage with audiences? Sympathy.

I think whenever audiences across the world have watched these films, they've always had it in the back of their minds that the lead actors in these films are no more and that this was their last movie ever. I tend to think of it as The Pakeezah Effect (The Meena Kumari Effect should be a more appropriate term though, but I'm just used to saying it the other way). I'm sure if people had watched these films unknowingly, they would come out of the theatres saying - "Hey, you know what, I just saw a very nice film. Would recommend you to watch it", instead of "Hey, you know what, I just saw the best film ever made! You must be mad for not having seen it yet!!!???"