Ruminations on films as Hollywood celebrates National Cinema Day

Princess Moanna in Guillermo Del Toro-directed Pan's Labyrinth (2005).

‘I wish I knew how to quit you,’ Jack says to Ennis (Brokeback Mountain) , and it hits you right where your gut feelings exist, and I walk out defeated, after watching the nth bad film, knowing somewhere at the back of the head, that next week I would be watching films releasing in the theatre and shows on OTT platforms. But as the US celebrates the National Cinema Day on August 27, I would like to share films that just get better with every screening. This is not a listicle with numbers, but a trip down Pan’s Labyrinth for the last two decades or so. Are you willing to take the test, Moanna?

Just like the little girl, let us go down that rabbit hole of time and rediscover movies we have loved. Stories that hold our collective imaginations captive. Gifts that keep on giving.

As the old lady in Tumbbad says, ‘Lalchi hai tu!’ (‘You are greedy!’) and I take this dialogue personally. Yes, I am greedy for stories that make men like James Bond fall in love irrevocably with beautiful women (Casino Royale) and become a tad human. I have an insatiable appetite for getting to know that grandpa who is first pissed off at Android Kunjappan being left in his care when he wants his son to live with him, but then learns to love the quiet robot so much that he takes the machine to the temple and even has a horoscope cast for the him. I want to receive that wedding card which says ‘Bobby Weds Baby’, know how brothers deal with an unfinished home and love in a neighbourhood fit for those no better than dogs.

The creation of cinema is like watching a newborn come into this world. A young man in love who is about to tell his parents that he's in love has to watch his dad announce that mum is pregnant (Badhaai Ho), another lad too chicken to come out to his parents gets married to a girl who is in the closet as well pretending to be heterosexual because they think acceptance would be a problem (Badhaai Do). Cinema resonates with real life as a domestic help wants a better life for her daughter (Nil Battey Sannata), families go to impossible lengths to send their kids to a better school (Angrezi Medium) and yes, a young man pretends to be blind in order to get better opportunities like housing and a gorgeous woman, or two (Andhadhun).

Young men will want to walk about with a pretty girl exploring cities and impressing them with poetry in iconic love stories like Before Sunrise. But how do you erase the memories of your love? Will you choose to be like Jim Carrey and subject your brain so you have nothing but the Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind?

Since you cannot, you write songs and play the guitar and agonise for a love that could not be. You seek solace, you seek the one who was there ‘Jab Kahin Pe Kuch Bhi Nahi Tha’ and are catapulted into fame as a Rockstar (I would still recast the female lead in a flash, and torture Janardan Jakhar or JJ a bit more so he would write more soulful songs than the lame pantomime/festival songs). Speaking of singers that seared our souls, there’s Gully Boy, a film single-handedly responsible for all the ridiculous rap songs that you hear in just about every OTT show and films.

Were we prepared for an incredible journey into a world that was inhabited by the blue folk? The trailers for Avatar gave us a glimpse into James Cameron’s mind. The story was simple: Rich countries have always invaded new territories and plundered their lands, leaving behind them destruction of all the resources that made those territories so beautiful. Do we fight for our lands and ideas that have fallen prey to invasion or do we go down the spiral of drug-induced haze and blame it on the government?

When the government does nothing, champions like Paan Singh Tomar pick up guns and turn into dacoits. They are local Robin Hoods, and villagers don’t want to turn them in. But directors like Martin Scorsese know how to send men under cover into the gangs. They’re embedded in so deep, they have to fight for their identity (The Departed). When there’s a war on and there are two plots to kill the most awful villain of the time, do the Inglorious Basterds succeed? What else do you call people who choose money over a little kidnapped child but Ugly? How does an honest Bajrangi Bhaijaan traverse into the enemy territory to return a lost child? When a man is found dead next to a suitcase full of cash, would you take it and be ready to die for it?

Will the city be saved by The Dark Knight? Or will Gangs of Wasseypur rule the countryside with their guns? What makes gangsters so fascinating to ordinary folks that we keep making them look glamorous in films like Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai? This need to play the hero will push Tony Stark to confess, ‘I’m Ironman,’ and give us a world of superheroes (and turn us into creatures that wait for a scene after the end credits have rolled). We turned Wushu fans when Ang Lee gave us Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and flocked to the theatres to watch two boxing clans fight and a mother who did not want her son to go the way of the father in Sarpatta Parambarai.

Films made inevitably fall back to Shakespeare and put Hamlet in Kashmir. So incredible are the visuals in Haider, you don’t know whether you’re lusting after the Chinar trees or the stunning Tabu. Irrfan Khan (though old and crotchety in the film) made me want to kidnap him and feed him just to watch that face light up as he anticipates what is in his Lunch Box. A seemingly impossible transformation in Marathi film Natrang is still the best (even better than the superbly fit Sylvester Stallone turning into a pot-bellied cop). How Atul Kulkarni transforms himself from the stud of the village into the effeminate ‘maushibai’ (auntie) just because he wants to follow his passion to be in a Tamasha company (a Marathi Travelling Theatre Troupe) is the stuff of legends.

Had Muybridge not won a bet with Leland Stanford and taken chronological pictures of a galloping horse, had Dadasaheb Phalke not been inspired to make movies (Harishchandrachi Factory), had Kodak not developed the IMAX black and white film especially for Oppenheimer, had Tom Hanks not had the ability to choose the best films, had Margot Robbie not been so perfect, would we be rushing to buy black coffee and caramel popcorn at the movies?