In the poem All the world’s a stage, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), known more as a playwright than an actor himself, used a narrative form to express his innermost emotions about how he thinks that the world is a stage and all the people living in it are mere players or characters. These characters are set to go through seven different phases in their lives. Regarded as the ‘Bard of Avon’, having written about 38 plays and other literary works including sonnets, poems and verses, he passed away at a relatively young age in 1616. If only he had lived in present times, and given his keen observation of the goings on in society, he might have felt highly gratified about his aforementioned portrayal of the world as well as the men and women therein after noting the way cinema has virtually conquered the minds of most people. The coming days are heading to witness the players of the silver screen joining the rapidly rising number of vote-seekers to create a complex social scene in the land, giving modern poets a chance to emulate the Bard.

One could approximately estimate the extent of cinema’s sway over the land’s people as long as they had to per force view the movies in the halls specially built for screening them. Now that films can be viewed not only on the small screen in total privacy and also on the mini-screen of smart mobile phones, even a wild guess on the number of addicts to cinema in the land can go wrong by a long shot.

The monetary value of the different outlays on producing a movie such as what the producer invests in the hope of getting attractive return, wages to all who appear on the screen, particularly the principal actors called heroes, heroines and villains, expenses on publicity to increase the outreach of cinema in advance, infrastructure cost relating to screen the movie and so on has just crossed amounts in astronomical proportions that can leave astronomers blushing. Entry of government into the world of cinema, eyeing various taxes generated totally by the enterprise has just got it into the throes of controversy, particularly because of the inconsistent verdicts of the Board of Film Certification, earlier known as Central Film Censor Board, with large amounts of money exchanged on the sly.

Once a film crosses the bar set by the government agency concerned, the litmus test for its success on many counts, including handsome return to the producer, name as well as fame to those who appear on the screen and also behind the screen, is the verdict of the connoisseurs. They are truly mere players coughing up money for their short-lived merriment.