Second Shot

There are favorite films that you keep revisiting and then there are those that, well…you just end up watching a few times too many. These repeat viewings are something like unforced errors from tennis- compelled into revisiting a film they change the thought you knew the story.

I often revisit films I believed I wouldn’t bother about a second time around. Like for instance Tanu Weds Manu, yes, I now you were expecting something like Citizen Cane or Deewar but I’ll get to those in a bit, which I kind of enjoyed but the rather filmy and clamorous ‘third-act’ convinced me that once was enough. A few months later I ended up not only sitting through the whole thing again but this time around I enjoyed the enjoyable parts more and the climax wasn’t as laborious.

What had changed in the interim for me to enjoy Tanu Weds Manu as much as I did the second time around? Could it be that I knew an end was in sight and so it didn’t seem so arduous? I believe the effort one puts in a viewing a film in this day and age is directly proportional to the degree of liking that film. Taking out time, braving the traffic to reach the cinema hall, finding parking and finally shelling out an amount that could feed a family of raccoons for months, watching a film isn’t what it used. Thanks to the time that one invests in watching a film, the expectations become high and maybe that’s why anything halfway decent gets talked about as if the rules were being rewritten. Sometimes watching a new film for the first time a few months after its release and on DVD in the comfort of your home can make you as patient as the Count of Monte Cristo. Even the apparently weird and revolting stuff like No Smoking (okay, here I go again and no, I didn’t like it and yes, I have read Stephen King and Kafka so Anurag K’s logic doesn’t hold water for me and no, I will not revisit it) didn’t seem trouble me as much.

Watching a film again and seeing a different story could have to do with your frame of mind more than anything else. Dil Chahata Hai (DCH) is one film that I saw during its initial theatrical run and unlike many people I knew I couldn’t get myself to watch it for the second or third time. Half a decade later I saw it on TV and gave up midway. I shouldn’t have watched Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (QSQT) a day before DCH on TV and who knows I’d have sat through it. DCH is a film that is so dated even the first time around that sometimes you wonder why no one saw the regressive attitude of all the characters behind the snazzy hairdos and the flashy cars? By contrast QSQT is a film that might be 23 years old but it still looks fresh and real. In 1989 Mansoor Khan simply set the ageless Romeo-Juliet and in a Thakur clan and retold the done to death tale in a manner that Hindi commercial cinema hadn’t seen. The diminutive lass is as afraid of her authoritarian father as any Hindi film leading lady has been since the talkies but she still is her own person. Now contrast this with Preity Zinta’s character from DCH- a mute lamb that follows stupidity in the name of good manners. Rashmi’s friend Kavita (Shenaz Kudia), who taunts for being a Frankenstein of a father’s monster, never pushes her beyond a point and then goes all out to help her. Readily submitting to just about everything and everyone, Shalini in DCH has no friends and even her own inner child seems to have abandoned her!

Watching a classic is an entirely different ballgame. Many films that have existed for two decades or more automatically seem to be labeled classics. This is what the marketing machineries try- alter our perception of what ought to be measured as a classic and peddle their wares. Anything monochromatic and laden with bad acting and histrionics isn’t a classic. All Raj Kapoor films aren’t classics. Citizen Cane is a classic. The Killing is a classic. Tere Ghar Ke Saamne is a classic. A Touch of Evil is enjoyable watching but it ain’t a classic in that sense of the word; you get the drift, right?

A sure-shot test of a classic worthy of continued revisiting is the extent of cruelty of time. Time can be very rude towards films and many a times it simply kills a part of their relevance. Mother India is still a classic but decades have made its intensity slightly animated. A few days when I felt a shiver run down my spine at the end of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, I knew why the film has been consistently winning the tag of the 2nd Greatest Film Ever for years now. There is a great deal of datedness to the seminal classic but that’s got more to do with things like San Francisco of the 1950’s, the cars and the dressing sense more than anything else while in Mother India or Awara the age shows across the board.

A classic, a cult-classic, an under-rated gem, a disaster that time has been kind to…the reasons for revisiting a film don’t impact the viewing pleasure. It’s a nice way to (re)discover something that wasn’t there or finally notice something that’s been staring in the face for years, revisiting a films is always fun. It should be tried on a regular basis and much like dancing as if you don’t care who’s watching don’t shy away from films others wouldn’t get. Why else do you think I end up watching Govinda’s Sandwich every time I catch it while channel surfing!

© Gautam Chintamani, 2011