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