Box Office Over Art: The Quiet Death of Cinema

Sri City: I remember watching October in theatres when I was thirteen. I didn’t understand much, only that it felt unlike anything I had seen before. Years later, I watched it again. When the final frame faded to black, I saw myself on the screen,  two versions of me, quietly facing each other: the one who started the movie and the one who finished it. In that unspoken moment, I realized that some films don’t simply end. They linger, and in subtle, unexpected ways, they grow with you. That’s what cinema has done for me

But somewhere along the way, I’ve started to fear that this quiet kind of cinema, the kind that breathes slowly and asks for patience, is fading from our screens.

There’s a certain kind of magic in sitting in the dark, watching a story that isn’t yours, yet finding yourself in it. People often say literature lets you live a hundred lives while living one. Cinema goes a step further: it lets you feel them. Every time I leave a theatre, descending the red-carpeted stairs as the end credits roll and the music fades into silence, I feel the characters walking beside me. Their laughter, despair, and small, unspoken gestures linger in the spaces I return to, woven into the fabric of my thoughts. For a fleeting moment, I am no longer just a viewer; I have shared their world and carried fragments of it back into my own.

Cinema does this quietly, almost imperceptibly, until the story has settled inside you. The same film that once made me laugh now leaves me still. The same ending that once felt whole now aches with new meaning. It doesn’t instruct; it lingers, revealing what you already knew but hadn’t yet found words for. But lately, that quiet stillness of discovery feels rare.

The recent conversation around Homebound reopened an old wound in Bollywood: the uneasy balance between passion and profitability. Belonging to the world of artistic, quiet cinema, the film received a standing ovation at Cannes and glowing reviews, The Guardian praised its “excellent lead performances and strong cinematography,” while IMDb users rated it 8.1. Yet Karan Johar admitted he wasn’t sure he could make such a film again, not because he lacked the desire, but because it simply didn’t earn enough. ₹3.04 crore, to be exact, a number that, in today’s market, is enough to silence intent. Many argued it was Johar’s fault: few screens, minimal marketing, no noise. A film built on risk, lost to the risk-averse.

It’s a paradox the industry knows too well. Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar too wasn’t celebrated when it first released. Its turbulence, its unvarnished ache, took time to be understood. Now it’s a cult classic. But not every film gets that second life. Not every misunderstood masterpiece finds redemption in a re-release. Some vanish quietly, buried beneath the weight of what sells. And with them vanish the voices, visions, and vulnerabilities that might have redefined what cinema could be.

In stark contrast to such artistic films, Housefull 5, a towering example of commercial, loud cinema, earned ₹158 crore at the box office, while the audience’s rating barely scraped 3.4. Described by The Quint as “unsubtle humour and wasted talent in a never-ending franchise,” its success isn’t surprising; it’s strategic. A triumph of machinery, not meaning. Together, these films reveal something crucial: it’s not the story on screen that determines success, but the one told around it.

In Bollywood, the real storytelling begins long before the first show. PR has become the invisible auteur of the industry: scripting perception, emotion, and memory. Months before a film’s release, a machine hums to life: teaser drops, airport spottings, engineered feuds, carefully timed controversies. We like to believe we discover films, but more often, they’re handed to us already wrapped in meaning. PR doesn’t just sell stories; it manufactures them. The quieter films, the ones that ache instead of shout, don’t survive this theatre of noise. They are too patient for algorithms, too sincere for spectacle. And so, they fade. Because art, today, must first be marketed to be seen.

Anurag Kashyap, in one of his interviews, said Bollywood has stopped experimenting because it’s terrified of failure. But maybe the fear isn’t only in the studios; maybe it’s in us too. We’ve taught the industry what to make. We stream what trends, reward familiarity, and scroll past what asks us to feel too much. In doing so, we decide what stories get told. The loop feeds itself, and cinema responds in kind.

But where does this fear come from? Does it stem from a deficiency in imagination, a slow erosion of curiosity, or a reasoned defence against the overwhelming noise around us? Every week, the same trailers, teasers, hashtags, and “must-watch” lists blur into one endless feed, teaching us to seek comfort over curiosity. In a world where everything screams for attention, silence begins to feel risky. Perhaps audiences aren’t devoid of imagination; perhaps they’ve just been numbed by the spectacle built to sell it. And in that numbness, something vital slips away: the willingness to be surprised.

Cinema isn’t created in isolation; it’s made in response. Every remade plotline, every cautious script, every recycled joke reflects back what we choose to celebrate. When we reward sameness, we teach the industry to fear imagination. When we dismiss sincerity because it lacked noise, we tell artists that risk is indulgence.

Not every film will be rediscovered a decade later. Some will disappear, taking with them possibilities we’ll never even know we lost. Maybe that’s the real tragedy: not that good films fail, but that we fail to meet them halfway. Because cinema, like any algorithm, only gives us what we keep choosing. The screen, after all, reflects not just the world, but us.

But the loop isn’t unbreakable. Change won’t come from studios or algorithms; it will come from attention, from curiosity, from choosing to look beyond what’s handed to us. Every ticket bought for a smaller film, every view that isn’t guided by trend or marketing, is a vote for imagination. Cinema has always mirrored its audience; if it has grown quieter, safer, less daring, maybe so have we. The only way to save it, then, is to demand more of ourselves,  to watch bravely, to feel deeply, to seek what isn’t already screaming to be seen. Because the future of cinema doesn’t depend on who makes the films, but on who stays to listen when they whisper.