I wallowed in a state of ennui. Life was very
insipid that Tuesday afternoon until I switched on the TV for some mindless
white noise, and HBO was playing the ‘Inception’. Leonardo jolts awake in the plane and is
surprised to see his team mates around him. Did they
succeed? Are they still dreaming? Hans Zimmer’s ‘Time’ starts to play in the
background as Leo walks down the airport and we feel happy for some reason. He
enters home and sees his children playing on
the porch. He spins the top on the table and rushes to hug them. The camera
zooms on the top. It wobbles slightly. You pray for it to fall. The screen
blanks out. I gasped.
This flitting sojourn in Nolan’s classic
sent my brain tizzy with excitement, as it started writing its own screenplay
on dreams, reality and life in between. The curse of the ennui had finally been
lifted.
The
other day I asked my mother about my first movie at the theatre, as a baby. Had
I asked her what colour frock I wore on my first birthday or if I bawled or
behaved on my first day of school she wouldn’t have been too shocked nor would
she have jogged her memory so much. I was hoping she would name a Kamal Haasan blockbuster
of the 80’s, reaffirming my belief that I was always a film connoisseur. What she
did name is irrelevant now, but I grew on a staple of regional and English
movies from childhood and cinema was my greatest therapy.
Our family is a bunch of devout Kamal Haasan
fans. So much that he is like a member of our kin. Every avatar of his reminds
my mom of someone in the house. Demented lover, poor communist, choreographer
with suicidal tendencies, we have them all. The tryst with cinema had only one
aberration though; my grandfather who supposedly sat beside Rajinikanth in a flight
and failed to recognize him even after the superstar introduced himself.
Earliest memories of watching movies date back to summer holidays squandered
away rolling on mattresses in front of Doordarshan’s Saturday night specials or
at a cousin’s community open-air theatre with packed tiffin dhabbas. We watched
robots come alive, kids getting locked in their houses and the great escapade
of prisoners in awe. One month of Jaundice and missing school went by without
much complaint thanks to the re runs of old movies, which I devoured lying sprawled
on the hall sofa.
Adolescence is best remembered by the AR
Rahman phase. Road trips meant marathon singing -along sessions till the tapes
screeched out of agony. Then came the ‘Titanic’ craze. We stuck posters of the
legendary ship pose, and shed copious tears when Jack died. I admit I am
embarrassed about it today but I’m sure Di Caprio is more. Deploring romance in
books, I feasted on mind numbing rom- coms smitten by bumping onto a cute
stranger, realizing the love for an old school friend, the climax at the
airport. You know the works. Luckily with age came sanity and the ability to
discern the good from the bad, the realistic from the fantasy and define pure
cinema. And when I did, a whole new
beautiful world opened up, giving me a peek into the fascinating lives of Iran,
Germany, Korea and Argentina.
The good thing about great cinema is that
inspires you to watch more. The last ten minutes of the Inception set the right
mood to watch Court, India’s entry for the upcoming Oscars. With its lingering camera work, this
extremely deft and subtle satirical take on the Indian legal system is the kind
of movie that runs in your head as an afterthought long after the credits roll.
The more you mull lover it, the more you remember the nuances and deeper it
caves in releasing all the pent up remorse. Films graduated from being
entertainment, escapism or wish fulfilment into catharsis.
I’ve learnt more about cinema from teaching
it to an enthusiastic bunch of college students than studying and understood
life better from Woody Allen, The Motorcycle Diaries and the friendship of Andy
Dufresene and Red then I can ever hope to.
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