"I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.''
You may not know who articulated this particular piece of dialogue or from which movie it comes from but you KNOW this line. You've heard it, maybe it was uttered by a friend of yours, maybe you stumbled across it on an article or perhaps your uncle had jokingly said it once. You KNOW this line. And if you don't, I sincerely pray that the rock you have been living under since you were born doesn't collapse anytime soon. For the uninitiated, this endlessly quoted line comes from the 1972 masterpiece, 'The Godfather', which, in many circles, is considered to be the finest movie ever made and rightfully so. The popularity and durability of this line says a lot about the momentous power of cinema, to think that a few words, voiced 40 years ago has left such an indelible mark on modern pop culture.
But such is the magic of movies. Intentionally or unintentionally, certain movies do leave a mark on us. They entertain, enlighten and in some rare cases, with the potent mix of a wonderful script and a wizard like director, they inspire. Movies are magic, rent a cinema screen plain and simple. I will never forget the unbridled joy of watching the first 'Lord Of The Rings' movie, the entire experience was sheer, unadulterated happiness. Movies provide us with an escape from our reality, which,at times,is something we all require and in fact,something we all crave for. We have to do the best with the hand that has been dealt to us and will eventually have to face the plethora of problems that life catapults at us but thanks to the sorcery of cinema, for 2 or so hours, you can forget that your boss is hard on you, you can forget that your girlfriend just diced your heart into microscopic pieces, you can forget that your grades are falling because for those two hours, you are transported to an entirely different world, a world where anything is possible. For those two hours you visit a galaxy far far away for a chance encounter with Luke Skywalker or make a quick stop at The Shire to meet Frodo and the gang. For those two hours, anything and everything is possible, for those two hours, you are infinite.
The best kind of movies are the ones that lingers on in the deep recesses of your brain much after you have left the theater, the ones that make you think, sadly, in today's day and age, these kind of movies are being produced infrequently. This is in part due to the 'Twilight' revolution, a series of disturbingly bad movies wherein we are forced to sit through one girl's journey towards perfecting her impression of a plank of wood (Mind you, Kristen Stewart is getting really good at it!). It is a saddening thought that more people are aware of the 'Twilight' movies than they are of classics such as 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' or 'The Silence Of The Lambs'. But fear not, for there is still hope. While visionary filmmakers in the ilk of Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen are quietly preparing for their last Hurrahs, the relatively new kids in the block such as Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino have provided ample proof so far that they are more than ready to take up the mantle. The bottom line here, is that no matter what happens, cinema will endure, It always has and always will. We will never grow tired of watching movies just as Directors and Producers will never stop making them and for that, we should be glad because what would life be without a pinch of magic?, and make no mistake, movies ARE magic. I am willing to wager my life that 40 years from now, somewhere, someone will be saying ''I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse''. Cinema will endure.