It all begins at schools that curb any creativity one possesses. Spoon feeding intensifies this process that is propped up by a strong inculcation to adopt herd mentality. No wonder why divergent thinking is considered felonious in India.
Film critics here are quite narrow-minded. They discourage out-of-box thinking and artistry. Their reviews lack introspection. At most they will admire "A Wednesday", "Dasvidaniya", or "Mumbai Meri Jaan", and regard them as Oscar-worthy masterpieces. On the other hand, they are too lousy to comprehend even the simplest of metaphors, let alone interpreting a complex work of art. They thrive on spoon-feeding even though they wouldn't admit it. For this reason they revile anything they fail to comprehend. If you can't understand calculus, it doesn't become worthless or dumb, you morons! They equate a movie's quality to its box office performance. However, box office ceases to matter when it comes to reviewing the movies of certain actors from a rival clan.
The notion of art itself is quite restrictive in this country. For them only a low-budget movie with a "serious" theme can be a part of art-house cinema. Abstract and surreal cinema are beyond their comprehension. If directors like Stanley Kubrick, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Christopher Nolan, David Lynch, or Luis Buñuel were Indian directors, poor guys would have been stoned with insults by Indian critics. For the few good movies they admire, they even fail to comprehend them properly. For e.g. "Mr. and Mrs. Iyer" and "Morning Raaga".
With the exception of Khalid Mohammed, none of the Indian reviewers are aware of the nuances of film-making. At least, he isn't intimidated by a movie's box office potential. However, the trouble with the Indian critics — as with him — is their narrow vision of quality. They would laud movies like "Salaam Bombay" or "1947 Earth" — they are great movies, no doubt — but whenever anyone charters an unconventional path, or creates something outside the realm of traditional cinema as in "Memento" or "2001: A Space Odyssey", they throw a fit. If a movie like Memento were made in India, none of them would would be able to understand it at the first place. In turn, they would make fun of its non-linear structure and call it the "worst movie ever." *Cough*, even in the presence of Himesh Reshammiya's "Karzzzzzz". Sorry if I got the number of Zs wrong.
In an industry where spoon-feeding and having a low attention span are considered necessities, it is indeed blasphemous to think out of the box.
