Friday, February 20, 2009

Home Box Office

Its been quite a while since I posted something. No, I didn't join the Slow Blog Movement. I was just busy with a lot of other things. And sometimes I was busy doing nothing. But to be honest, I didn't have much to write as well.
Most weekends were spent doing some household chores, playing badminton and of course, catching up with some good movies. And I like to watch movies at home itself, avoiding all the hassle of going to some movie theater.
There were a couple of them I watched on TV some weekend which really inspired me to write this post.

The first one that I wanted to mention was 'Remember the Titans'. The hero's part was played by Denzel Washington, a brilliant actor, who co-incidentally looks a bit like Barrack Obama.
The movie's setting is in the 1960-1970's when USA had this equal rights movement, the Black-White divide, the fight for equality, justice, internal peace, harmony and so on.
Most of the movie is about Coach Boone (Denzel Washington) who transforms a bunch of young men who have their racial and social differences, into a team that creates history.

Right from the moment he is appointed as team coach, he invites controversy. More so because he's of African American origin. Something that people in the white dominated high school couldn't tolerate. He also has an assistant coach, who is supposed to be a better coach than him. Time and again they disagree on their strategies and the coaching itself.But in the end, they decide to set aside their differences and come up with the winning formula for the all winning team

Right through the movie Coach Boone uses all tactics of Saama, Daana, Bedha, Dhanda to inculcate the needed qualities in his team. Sometimes he even goes overboard in imposing himself on the team and says things like, "This is not a democracy. This is a dictatorship."
But then in the end he proves to everyone that he is a self believer, and a winner. He makes the team proud of their name, "The Titans".

There are many scenes in the movie that I would want to write about, but then it would get boring to read it. The point that I wanted to make was that a country like ours could do with a few strong minded men who could unite us and makes ours a very successful nation.
As of now, we have leaders who thrive by creating fear in the minds of the people.Leaders who instigate attacks, leaders who do a lot of questionable things in the name of judicial activism. And yet, we get to see such leaders going scot free and hogging the bandwidth on national television at prime time.

As common people also, I think we can learn a few things from the movie.We can start off with setting aside our differences - be it difference in language, religion, caste, creed or whatever.An even bigger achievement would be when we agree to set aside our big egos to come together to work towards a bigger cause. A cause for the nation.

Do we really need an incident like 26/11 to come together and show that we don't tolerate this kind of timid leadership anymore? I believe that the greatest threat to us is from the enemy within. Why do we need more Kasabs when we have our own leaders to kill the country slowly and steadily?

If this movie was about inspiration, role models and things like that, the next movie is all about love, understanding and relationships.
The movie that I wanted to talk about is "The Raincoat". I liked the movie for its simplicity, and yet how it passes on an important message in a subtle manner. At the outset, this seems
like most other Indian movies, i.e. a typical love story. Oh! by the way, its one of the very few movies that I've seen Aishwarya Rai playing the humble role of a housewife in tatters.

I'm always very bad at remembering names and numbers. I cant really remember the names of the characters in the movie.So let me proceed with their real names
i.e Ajay (Devgan) and Aish(warya Rai).

Ajay and Aish are childhood friends living in the same mohalla. And both of them know that they love one another, but they don't confess that. And on his part Ajay is shy and reluctant to take the initiative.
But that's not the same with Aish. Be it going to watch an adult movie with him, or taunting him to help her wear her dress, Aish yearns for some amount of intimacy with Ajay. But there's not much of a response from his side. Unwilling to wait, and also to relieve her parents' burdens, she decides to marry a "rich" man from Calcutta.

Six years pass by, and Ajay finds his way to Calcutta in search of money to start a new business. He takes the help of his close friend for this, and in the process he also finds a confidante in his friend's wife. Ajay expresses his desire to go and meet his long lost love, and find out how life's been treating her. And since its raining very heavily, she gives him a raincoat.

Right from the time that he finds his way into her house, till the time that he returns from there is a brilliant showcase about feelings of love, understanding, mutual care and so on. Its also a well orchestrated drama that both of them enact.All this in order to hide their failures in life and at the same time convince the other person that they are more than happy with their lives
Only when Aish goes out to get something to eat, that Ajay comes to know Aish's real plight, her penury and the kind of baneful existence that she's living through. And to help her without hurting her pride, he writes a letter that goes something like this...
"It's good that I met your landlord while you were away. If you were so deep in trouble, you could have always asked me for help. After all, if I were your husband wouldn't all your troubles me mine too?" It turns out that he has given the money that he had arranged for his business to the landlord of the house that Aish stays in.

And only when Ajay goes back home and checks his raincoat, he finds a letter from Aish that goes something like this...
"It's good that I wore your raincoat today and found this letter in the pocket. If you didn't have any money, you could have asked me for help. After all, if I were your wife, wouldn't all your troubles be mine too?"
And this time it turns out that she had kept a lot of her jewelery in the raincoat, so that Ajay could make use of it.

After this, the movie comes to a seemingly abrupt end. But then, that's the most fitting ending to a movie like this.

For some reason, I'm a big fan of movies where, in the end the lovers don't come together. Probably because that's what happens to many a real life love stories. And probably because such movies makes us realize the importance of the people who love us. Some people might be shy to express their feelings, while some might take the other person for granted. Maybe the true value of a loved one is felt only when that person is no longer with him/her. And maybe when someone wants to acknowledge the other person's feelings, its already too late. What's the point in securing the stables after the horse has bolted??

Most movies have this disclaimer, "All characters depicted in this movie are purely fictional. Any resemblance to any real life characters is purely unintentional."
But if one analyzes a bit more profoundly, we might just find ourselves in some of these fictional characters.

Don't you think so?


3 comments:

  1. Good one Santosh!

    Well, i think the movies were lovers part touch us more than the ones where lovers unite!! Probably because we expect the lovers to unite in movies, and in the movies which show otherwise, we naturally start thinking why and how it happened? Was it justified? Did the Hero/Heroine deserve this(Mungaaru Male for one, Devdas for another, DevD for all!)

    I don't think romantic movies with happy endings make us ponder over life, as much as tragic or subtly sad ones do. What say?

    But then, they do hold some sort of mirror as your last few words say:
    "But if one analyzes a bit more profoundly, we might just find ourselves in some of these fictional characters"

    Note: I would like to read more such opinions/thoughts on various other good movies that have been coming :)

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  2. Nice to see you back in action :)
    Im in the queue to grab the DVDs ..Do I need to say anything more about the write-up :)?
    --Divya

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  3. Nice to see you back in action :)
    Im in the queue to grab the DVDs from you.. Do I need say anything more about the write-up :) ?

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