Thursday, May 12, 2005

the show must go on

Hey..

There are a lot of unexplained mysteries that happen around us every single day, maybe even every single moment. "Aha", "Really?", "Wow", "I cant believe it!!", "Oops" - all this is followed by a wave of curiosity that pushes us to figure out and decode the mystery.. and when we cant, which happens in most cases, they end up getting converted to conspiracy theories or just remain being mysteries forever.

It is not an anticlimax, but the one such mystery that I got wondering about is our craziness for movies. I can understand the fact that we all need entertainment and some of us may like a lot more of it than a few others, but still it doesnt explain why we must be so mad about movies. What is the big fun in watching a puny man in his late teens bringing down 50 people in 10 minutes or patiently go through the torture of 20 scantily clad extras dancing with even more undressed herione ? Well once or twice is sounds fun, but the same stuff again and again and again ?...

Of course it is ironic that I, of all people, write about this. I do belong the club of cine crazy morons who keep watching the same movie multi million times. I did watch TITANIC eleven times in theatres because it got 11 Oscars..(and then tons of times in DVD). I spent almost a couple of thousand rupees to watch Kandukondein Kandukondein - 8 times in DEVI multiplex (I hope my mom doesnt read this!!). And I can go on and on with examples like this - but will stop here since on retroscpection, the first couple of them already make me look like a idiot.

Anyways, movies running for 50 days, 100 days, 1 year - I can understand... but a movie playing for 500 weeks - almost 10 years in one theatre ? this is crazy. The Hindi superhit Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge celebreated 500 weeks of continious run with a 60% full theatre every weekday and housefull every weekend at a theatre in Mumbai. This is simply amazing, considering the fact that 9 years after its release, the movie still pulls people to theatres - in the world of pirated VCDs and DVDs.

What is so special in that movie ? A jobless happy-go-lucky NRI kid born to a cartoon-father, falls in love with a bespectaled, slightly dark, already-engaged Punjabi girl whose father is a strict & stubborn man. He comes to India, fights for his love and wins the girl with her father's consent. In between there are songs shot in parts of Europe and in our own Punjab - THAT IS ALL ?!!?

When the movie was released, college gangs thronged the theater - it was at a time when there were no good romantic movies with superhit songs for a very long time.. So DDLJ created a mania, formed a cult of deewanas who ensured the success of the other copy-cat movies that followed the same trend. Every college gang made group bookings; every teenager memorized the dialogues; the Mehendi Lagaake rakhna song was sung at every dance party - the movie was a mania....

This was 9 years ago - but why is it still a superhit today ? Now there are movies of more richer and naughtier heroes and super sexy heriones shot in more exotic locales. There are movies with better songs and definitely better storylines. There are movies where Shah Rukh and Kajol have given better performances than DDLJ... - it just is a mystery why the movie is still running aiming for 600 weeks in that theater without any unqiue attribute anymore.

A simple calculation of the person-hours spent in watching this movie in one single theater is simply mind boggling....Neverthless, let me return to watching DDLJ in my DVD ;)

and the craze goes on and on ..

Chao..

1 comment:

Arvind Srinivasan said...

"Of course it is ironic that I, of all people, write about this" - How true !

You are not a true Rajini fan. How can a true Rajini fan make statements like "What is the big fun in watching a puny man in his late teens bringing down 50 people in 10 minutes" while a 50+ year old can do the same thing ?. Don't insult thalaivar.

Shame on you ;) ;p :-)))