The power of hybrids

A new trend has picked up in cinema. Gone are the times when a movie would take up a Sherlock holmes project and solve the murder mystery with its super-cold actors enacting malcontented characters. The two movies that I can name from the top of my head are Ne dis a la personne, and des liben der anderen. Both these movies are essentially thrillers and have a prolong and deep suspense involved. Still the way stories unwind in these movies has a deep dramatic influence. The drama element is so significant at points that while you are in the movie, you wonder it its really a thriller you are watching.

In Ne dis a la personne, the protagonist is a suspect who has been charged of the murder of his own wife. In discovering who actually killed his wife, he unveils the characters of so many people around himself and his wife, discovers his own love for his wife and exhibits his own vulnerabilities. He unravels the stories of his life in this search for the real murderer of his wife.

The other movie, des liben der anderen is a much more powerful movie. It should be a pure espionage movie with national security guards and innocent victims in the socialistic East Germany. However, again, the movie becomes more about the love between two artists, their own love for their art, the overall appeal of art to humanity and the very values of humanity that even spies are not inert to. This is probably the best directed movie I have seen in the year so far.

I completely understand that there is nothing new in this idea, and such movies have been made in the past. But its just the gush of these movies which made me think of this as a somewhat of a new formula for popular cinema.