Style or No style?

Stanley Kubrick, the Coen brothers, Gautam Vaudev Menon, what do these guys have in common?

They’re all filmmakers whose works you can recognise from looking at just one of their scenes.

Kubrick’s unending use of one point perspectives, the Coen Brother’s usual parodic takes and the our very own GV Menon’s romanticism, we see them all wielding their respective styles in almost all their works, save for a few.

So what is a style?

A style could be anything- a genre, a framing technique (such as in the case of Kubrick), or some kind of underlying theme, which is employed by a filmmaker like over the course of his works. A style to filmmaker is like a signature at the end of a letter.

Sathya, an aspiring filmmaker, says that he has tried to make every shot in his film poetic, which he intends to make into his signature.

The question here is, is it healthy for a filmmaker to sport a style?

Like answer more than half the problems in the world as well as this one, it would lie in the motive behind employing these styles.

First off, having a style does not promote complacency or blow up a cocoon of comfort.

The most rampant criticisms against most accomplished directors are that they do not experiment with different styles, that they are slaves to their own styles. Can Shankar make a minimalistic? Can Bala make an all-out romance? The answer is NO.

But, there’s nothing wrong with that. Just like film making is an area of interest, so is their choice of styles, and ones that they are unbeatably good at, so to speak.

Because, what makes more sense- to be the jack of all trades or the master of one?

But the trouble begins when you do it to impress

The problem however, begins when you take a style’s success to the head. When that happens, most of the directors over-employ these style, even if the story can do well without it. And when you do that, you are susceptible to the “Tarantino’s Curse”, which is the theory that as a director’s career goes on and they use the same style over and over, they tend to lose their finesse, sometimes to the point where they end their careers with a set of four or five really bad movies that eclipse the director’s earlier work.

Take Bala for instance, with, flop after flop with his dark portrayal of reality. Why is it that some directors are able to stick to a style and remain successful while others can’t?

It’s because their style remains only a part of their film and not the film itself, they don’t hesitate to get rid of the style when it interferes with the purpose of the film, which is paramount. However, you can one step further and blend your style and story in the perfect ratio, by knowing when you can use it when not to.

However, if you’re only just starting out as a filmmaker, it makes sense to experiment around for a bit, see what works and then settle down.

Happy filming!