The movie-viewing experience has undergone drastic transformations with every passing decade. It won't be a stretch to say that, at each of these turning points, the very soul of cinema has been fragmented into destructible Horcruxes. What was once just a communal experience in the cinema hall gradually became more accessible with the introduction of home video platforms first and then streaming services. On the flip side, despite all these changes in how we consume cinema, Vijay's final film Jana Nayagan turned out to be a victim of the age-old enemy—Piracy—albeit with a modern-day twist.
The massive leak of the film led to millions of viewers catching it on pirated sites overnight. What followed was a wave of support for Vijay, the film and its makers and a renewed backlash for piracy. In major capitalist societies, piracy is often seen as a form of dissent—a tool for digital activism to democratise films and send them to the last village on earth which has an internet connection. Often, foreign language films face this wrath when censorship, corporate greed and lack of financial strength defeat their purpose of a wider theatrical release. But in Jana Nayagan’s case, everything was secured for the popular star-turned-politician, with fans eagerly waiting to celebrate him on the big screen. So what went wrong? When the film failed to get a censor certificate from CBFC and landed in legal troubles, fans were aghast. Multiple postponements later, the second blow arrived, this time, in the form of the Election Commission of India wanting to review the film with Tamil Nadu state assembly elections around the corner. Political conspiracies were discussed, scenes that ran into trouble were dissected and Vijay, who was already at the centre of a heated election campaign, faced a third personal blow in his life. By this time, fans were getting increasingly impatient.
Vijay has long been the unofficial mascot of theatrical highs across the Southern states and for the Tamil community across the world. And fans have two brutal options to face in front of them: Grab a first day ticket with a large wad of cash and/or travel to the nearest city, or wait for the ticket rates to come down at the risk of facing spoilers on social media and fan communities worldwide. It is nearly impossible to secure tickets for the first three days of any top-tier star’s film, let alone a Vijay starrer, or a heavily hyped project such as Jana Nayagan. Today, the collective movie-viewing experience often comes at a premium — one that burns a hole in your pocket. Piracy has been an issue for over two decades now, but in an economy that treats moviegoers as mere tools to boost box office numbers, consuming the leaked footage and the film itself, begins to appear, for some, as a disillusioned act of making the “right” choice. And audiences are shockingly unfazed by the scale of the leak and what it has done to the confetti-throwing, whistles-blaring and roaring celebration at the cinemas. What was meant as Vijay’s swansong now stands in distorted chords, waiting to be picked up and pieced together all over again.
Above all, the issue has exposed audiences’ increasing requirement for small, steady dopamine hits. In an era where quick commerce rewards users with instant gratification and provides an illusion of packaging happiness in shiny labels, it rarely signals that such gratification comes with an expiry date. The wait and yearning to watch a film on a particular Sunday, weeks away, have now shifted to brushing it aside for a convenient OTT watch. Meanwhile, social media feeds its hungry audiences with micro-doses of content, tempting them towards faster, quicker access to the film itself.
Film critics often use a phrase specifically for films like Jana Nayagan: Theatrical Moments. It is a phrase so sacred that it trumps all existing rules in the playbook, including logic and rules of science. However, with the reduction of screen sizes, pauses have become part of the plot. Films have been given web series treatments and series are given micro drama treatments, maximising audiences' diminishing focus. And Jana Nayagan, much like other films, has become victim to ‘reel-fication’ where theatrical moments have been subdued to just another video among the thousands the eyes consume every day. Major scenes, cameos and significant dialogues have been pirated, stored and shared. Consequently, the ‘moments’ that are made for audiences to cheer and that offer a surprise factor are now dismembered in overstimulation. From catching the first show to engagement farming through viral content, film viewing has spiralled into an unrecognisable, dizzying race. Is this why we are never content with movies anymore? Why is it that just three two-minute-long clips decide the course of the entirety of the film?
Of course, there is a larger group of film enthusiasts who still await its release in theatres, but what does the leak say about the behaviour of the average moviegoer today? At what cost are we willing to forgo a communal experience for mere consumption?
Perhaps the answer lies beyond piracy itself. More than piracy, we exist within an ecosystem that thrives on it. As we relentlessly consume film updates, probe cast and crew for updates and latch onto stray moments from promotional tours, the piecemeal consumption trend never stops—and we naysayers become pirates ourselves.
