Nadaaniyan is a must watch

There’s a proverb which goes “Even a broken clock is right twice a day” meant to express that you can eke out some value in even the most useless of things. Netflix’s Nadaaniyan is, to extend this analogy, a digital clock with no batteries. Not even a sliver of hope you might feel. Since this is a movie that embraces Murphy’s law of “anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. A script and acting chops to this movie are what washboard abs are to a debate team. (Yes, I made a reference to this movie. Must watch it to get it).

Now, have I watched the entire movie yet? No. (I might recommend against a one shot watch unless paramedics are on standby).

So, I’m not probably entitled to give a complete opinion on this. But I have absolute faith after watching the first two acts of the movie, that there can be no redemption in the third. Unless there’s a “it was all in the protagonists head” gotcha moment. But even that would reek of competence.

“Then why is this a must watch?”, you, the avid movie watcher, might ask.

This movie shifts benchmarks when it comes to ratings. Displacing what is there at the bottom. If you’re always watching a string of really well made movies you become blind to the appreciation of how tough it is to make one. Like how editing is considered an invisible art, because the best editing is the one which cannot be perceived. Nadaaniyan jolts you back to reality to show you the sheer palette of things that could easily fall off the entertainment treadmill.

Ideally a person who appreciates cinema should be exposed to all sorts of movies. Yes, we might tend to lean heavily on the IMDB and RT scores (or our favourite movie reviewer) before deciding to watch a movie, because time is precious. So eventually nothing below of 7 out of 10 would even qualify for a watch. This leads to further cementing of the Matthew Effect (otherwise also identified by the “rich get richer” phenomena) and hence we eventually end up with superhero slop monopolising the movie experience. Thus welcoming the fast food-ification of the movie industry.

A way to break this cycle is to also watch some Low to Mid movies which might be lower on the rating scale based on your threshold. Because mid movies might be MID as a whole, but still can have interesting ideas/nuggets that can be later pollinated to create refined outcomes.

But yes, I don’t expect everyone to diversify their movie experience by sprinkling their watchlists with highly MID movies. Thanks to the tyranny of time.

Thus a shortcut to recalibrating your expectation spectrum would be to hit it with an experience that is beyond your range of measurement. Like measuring the AQI at “Greatest Noida” (Yes, I made a movie reference again, please watch).

Nadaaniyan will thus reset your standards of watching a movie. You’ll be overcome with a renewed appreciation for even the most overlooked F-tier stuff. For all you know, you might even be inspired to watch the avante-garde Paint Drying (2016).