One newly restored movie shown at Cannes this year was unlike any other. Made in Hindi in 1976, “Manthan” (or “The Churning”) tells how Verghese Kurien’s co-operative ideas revolutionized Indian milk production. Now maybe that’s important to Indian Dairy Farmers, and maybe even to consumers of Kulfi and Ghee, but as movie material goes, it’s niche. The movie wasn’t even funded by a studio but by 500,000 members of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation contributing two rupees each.

But “Manthan” does something that movies do exceptionally well when they care to: It shows ordinary people as heroes in their own lives — giving their stories the immersive sweep and status usually reserved for galactic champions and make-believe princesses. It explains what it’s like to be somebody else.

Hard to put aside

Dramatizing their day-to-day means that we feel what they feel, fear what they fear, and share their story no matter how little we might first appear to have in common. Their injustices — easily ignored on the nightly news — are hard to put aside when you share them close-up in a movie theatre for two hours.

Time and time again, cinema’s unique immersive quality is most potent when it seeks to explain and entertain. Films that can be enjoyed as simple narratives but deliver an intellectual punch once your emotional defenses are down often linger in the memory.

Of course, there are movies that are obvious in their intentions, films like “Milk,” “Selma,” and “Oppenheimer,” where you know from the outset the ending and the meaning, and they’re no less powerful for that. But movies that show us a world we don’t know and describe what it was like to be in that place, at that time, have to explain complex situations through simple emotions. Sneaking their messages under our defenses and showing us why we should care.

They also give us a reason to believe. When few of us understood how the financial crash of 2007 had been allowed to happen, “Margin Call” led us into the world of collateralized debt obligation and overleverage and made it — to a degree — make sense. Even Disney’s “Bambi” is credited with laying the groundwork for environmental activism and reduced deer hunting.

Accessible to all

Cinema’s long-form, immersive nature makes it the ideal medium for creating clarity out of chaos and rendering those “too-difficult” subjects accessible to all—turning a niche subject into a shared and essential experience.

So, who cares about milk production in India besides Indian milk producers? Likely, anyone who’s seen “Manthan” does. The same modern cinema that shows wonderful things in laser-powered high definition also shows us what it is to be human. And make the world a little closer and a little clearer.