Second Shot

2011-11-06T20:12:00.000-08:00

Thereare 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 aresomething like unforced errors from tennis- compelled into revisiting a film theychange the thought you knew the story.

Ioften 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 Deewarbut I’ll get to those in a bit, which I kind of enjoyed but the rather filmyand clamorous ‘third-act’ convinced me that once was enough. A few months laterI ended up not only sitting through the whole thing again but this time aroundI enjoyed the enjoyable parts more and the climax wasn’t as laborious.

Whathad changed in the interim for me to enjoy TanuWeds Manu as much as I did the second time around? Could it be that I knewan end was in sight and so it didn’t seem so arduous? I believe the effort oneputs in a viewing a film in this day and age is directly proportional to thedegree of liking that film. Taking out time, braving the traffic to reach thecinema hall, finding parking and finally shelling out an amount that could feeda family of raccoons for months, watching a film isn’t what it used. Thanks tothe time that one invests in watching a film, the expectations become high andmaybe that’s why anything halfway decent gets talked about as if the rules werebeing rewritten. Sometimes watching a new film for the first time a few monthsafter its release and on DVD in the comfort of your home can make you as patientas the Count of Monte Cristo. Even the apparently weird and revolting stufflike No Smoking (okay, here I goagain and no, I didn’t like it and yes, I have read Stephen King and Kafka soAnurag K’s logic doesn’t hold water for me and no, I will not revisit it)didn’t seem trouble me as much.

Watchinga film again and seeing a different story could have to do with your frame ofmind more than anything else. DilChahata Hai (DCH) is one filmthat I saw during its initial theatrical run and unlike many people I knew Icouldn’t get myself to watch it for the second or third time. Half a decadelater 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 satthrough it. DCH is a film that is sodated even the first time around that sometimes you wonder why no one saw theregressive attitude of all the characters behind the snazzy hairdos and theflashy cars? By contrast QSQT is afilm that might be 23 years old but it still looks fresh and real. In 1989Mansoor Khan simply set the ageless Romeo-Juliet and in a Thakur clan andretold the done to death tale in a manner that Hindi commercial cinema hadn’tseen. The diminutive lass is as afraid of her authoritarian father as any Hindifilm 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 goodmanners. Rashmi’s friend Kavita (Shenaz Kudia), who taunts for being a Frankensteinof a father’s monster, never pushes her beyond a point and then goes all out tohelp her. Readily submitting to just about everything and everyone, Shalini in DCH has no friends and even her owninner child seems to have abandoned her!

Watchinga classic is an entirely different ballgame. Many films that have existed fortwo decades or more automatically seem to be labeled classics. This is what themarketing machineries try- alter our perception of what ought to be measured asa classic and peddle their wares. Anything monochromatic and laden with badacting 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 watchingbut it ain’t a classic in that sense of the word; you get the drift, right?

Asure-shot test of a classic worthy of continued revisiting is the extent ofcruelty of time. Time can be very rude towards films and many a times it simplykills a part of their relevance. MotherIndia is still a classic but decades have made its intensity slightlyanimated. A few days when I felt a shiver run down my spine at the end ofHitchcock’s Vertigo, I knew why thefilm 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 classicbut that’s got more to do with things like San Francisco of the 1950’s, thecars and the dressing sense more than anything else while in Mother India or Awara the age shows across the board.

Aclassic, a cult-classic, an under-rated gem, a disaster that time has been kindto…the reasons for revisiting a film don’t impact the viewing pleasure. It’s anice way to (re)discover something that wasn’t there or finally noticesomething that’s been staring in the face for years, revisiting a films isalways fun. It should be tried on a regular basis and much like dancing as ifyou 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 catchit while channel surfing!

popConned!

Second Shot