Monday, October 22, 2012

Needlessly dissecting a good movie


I take my movies seriously. I look for a message in every movie, and I honestly don’t understand how to take that message lightly. That being said, a good movie experience usually leaves me deeply affected. A bad movie experience leaves me untouched.

It’s not that I only like happy endings. In fact I am terribly skeptical of happy endings. I usually fancy myself as a passioned realist (Yes, I am aware of how pompous that sounds), and I hate it especially in love stories, when everything turns out hunky-dory. Like that nincompoop (adjective?) movie of Karan Johar. What was it? That extra-marital affair one with SRK, Rani Mukherji, Abhishek Bachhan and Preity Zinta I think. Okay now when an effin’ extra marital affair plot ends with both scorned halves of the couple ultimately cool with the infidelity, that is ridiculous enough. Unless of course they are genuinely chilled out hippy people, which I assure you NOBODY in a Karan Johar movie ever is. As if mocking the audience, I distinctly remember the last scene of the movie insinuating a possible romantic angle between the scorned husband of one couple and the scorned wife of the other AT THE FREAKIN’ WEDDING RECEPTION OF THEIR EXES! (Google reminds me I'm talking about Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna)Now I watched this movie I think some 6 years back so there might be technical glitches in my memory, but if I am mistaken I will be nothing but reassured that this wasn’t the case after all. The main reason I loathe the Karan Johar gang is because they make such fools of the audience. I doubt he’s stupid, but clearly he takes our stupidity for granted and it’s paying off for him, it seems like. Especially with such INANE movies like Student of the Year (which I have not seen, but I’m so livid I don’t care about fair chances anymore) being made. 

Anyway, this outburst wasn’t provoked by Karan Johar. Curiously, it was provoked by a brilliantly made Malayalam movie called ‘Diamond Necklace.’ I’d heard nice things about the movie, and though I am usually a little wary of Malayalam movies set in cities (I can’t stand the way the project ‘modern’ youth, women especially, there are more and more exceptions to this now – 22 Female Kottayam, for example), I decided to give this one a chance.

I wasn’t disappointed either. DN was engaging from the minute is started. Fast moving, excellent acting, brilliant characterizations, Fahad Fazil (or Fahadh Faasil as Wiki spells it) again flawlessly portrays the douchey character of a spendthrift doctor who is a compulsive spender and lets this weakness stoop himself into unimaginable lows. The three women in his life were also nicely played by Samvrutha Sunil, and two actresses who I think are new called Anusree and Gauthami Nair.

I was fast liking the movie more and more, because I couldn’t wait to see how the unscrupulous protagonist was gonna pay for his various misdeeds [SPOILER ALERT!!! which include stealing a diamond necklace from the terminally-ill woman he slept with without telling her he is already married, after making sure she’s asleep by double-dosing her with morphine and consequently getting the nurse in charge (who he also cheated on) fired.] So yeah, I was watching the movie thinking it should be fun to watch all of this bite him in the ass so hard at the end. Except it didn’t! With unimaginable luck, douchebag not only gets away BUT gets away with the goodwill of all the people he cheated.

The same thing happened in Woody Allen’s Matchpoint (the one with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Scarlett Johansson remember?) And I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the inspiration behind this movie. But at least in Matchpoint there is the satisfaction of at least some of the cheat-ees finally realizing that they’ve been cheated. Even if Scarlett Johansson was shot dead right after, at least for that one second Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was hated. Here there’s nothing! Everyone forgives him, and is even grateful to him for things he really had nothing to do with.

ARGH.
Sigh.
When the movie ended, my dad and mum understandably laughed at my outrage. It’s just a movie, he said. Why are you acting like it really happened?

Which is true.
So I should just chill out and go to sleep.

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