Three Movies

There is no movie which I can finitely claim as my best movie or a favourite. The finality of superlatives scares me. I have three movies in mind that I watched again this week, as I write. Three planets I re-visited. Each a planet with a pull of its own.

Sudhir Mishra’s ‘Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi’, (Hindi) set in the times of political turmoil of the 70s in India,  is not just the movie that gave me the ‘Shiny Ahuja problem’, as my husband has been jestingly calling it for nearly a decade now, or a tale of lament over unfulfilled dreams. It is an intense struggle of identities as the characters grapple with their individualities, beliefs, emotions, dreams and realities on a shifting landscape, drifting ahead to where life takes them inevitably, changing them forever. A gem of a movie that I can never stop loving.

Some stories blur the fine line that divides fact from fantasy. Hariharan’s ‘Ennu Swantham Janakikutty’ (Malayalam) beautifully does that. Janakikutty’s charm lies in her imaginative and talkative conscience that holds us captive as she lets us in on her secret. M.T Vasudevan Nair’s story weaves in and out of the ancient sarppakaavus and ruins of the enchanting Yakshi kottaram that Kunjathol haunts. I have always loved to believe that Kunjathol was real, maybe because I had watched the movie for the first time when I was around Janakikutty’s age. A movie that transports me to a different age and place every time I watch.

‘Amelie’ (French) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet is all about the little joys of everyday life. I don’t follow French, and this is the reason why I have always been surprised at how close ‘Amelie’ is to the superlative side of my love for stories. When I watched it for the first time many years ago, I loved Amelie without understanding a word of what she spoke, yet loving every second of it. Everything from the little acts of kindness to the happy coincidences, ‘Amelie’ is all about life and its small, yet extraordinary moments that largely go unnoticed every day.

Movies are temporary refuges. Like dreams. You step into an alternate universe. Then you wake out of it and land back exactly where you had left from.

So as I drift into the next dream.

Adieu. 

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