A month in India, part 9: Film-related pictures.

A sign for film work in Mumbai.

Last frames of DDLJ at Maratha Mandir.

B or C movie theater in Mumbai. I think. 

A common sight in India: political posters and film posters side-by-side.

Vijaykanth, a movie star-cum-politician welcoming people in the cheesiest poster I have ever seen.

...okay.

Vikram selling loans .. I think? This was the only ad with the man I ran into, so either he's not as popular as in my apartment, or he's discerning about advertisements.

Movie placards at the Bollywood disco section of the New Year's Eve party we went to in Chennai.

Movie posters in Madurai, including a re-release of an old MGR movie. His face you couldn't walk a mile in urban Tamil Nadu without seeing.

A month in India, part 3: DDLJ at Maratha Mandir.

Watching one of my favourite films in the one theatre that had never stopped showing it seemed like a life goal I would in all likelihood never get to complete; fate would work its curious ways and me and my friend wouldn't find the theater, or go on the wrong day, or at the wrong time, or the showing would be sold out, or something would come between us and this piece of Indian film history. And yet, despite all my worries, things actually worked out. On an early December Monday afternoon, I sat down into a comfortable balcony seat, having paid the amazingly low price of 20 rupees, and got ready to watch Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge at the fabled Maratha Mandir, Mumbai, during the 947th week of its run.

Of course, before that, me and my friend walked half a kilometre in the wrong direction, then stood mistakenly in the Dhoom 3 advance booking line for about 10 minutes, were relentlessly stared at by the fellow matinee movie-goers, for our goriness and our femaleness, chatted to some young mothers who'd brought their kids to see the film, trundled into the movie theater (though not before I'd irritably told one dude a piece of my mind in Finnish) and were seated by an usher who ruled the balcony like a dictator (and later moved us, seemingly for no reason). Then we stood up and listened to the Indian national anthem, glancing in every direction to see of other people were actually singing it, but nobody seemed to, at least not loudly enough to note.

To me, this was a familiar movie - indeed, one of the most familiar ones. I couldn't quite quote it from memory, but the dialogues, the scenes, the characters, the songs were all ones I had watched a dozen times or more. This was a film that I had rewatched throughout the decade I've been exploring Indian cinema, each time learning something new, each time understanding the Hindi and the cultural references in it a bit better. There wasn't a way to watch it with new eyes, even in this amazing new context, the legendary Maratha Mandir.

And yet, it was a completely new experience. To watch it on my own and chuckle at Shahrukh's Raj, still my absolute favourite character that the man has ever played, is not quite the same as having a whole audience appreciate his silly witticisms on the first half, or the jokes on the second half. There were some surprising elements to the crowd's engagement with the movie, as well. The way that Anupam Kher's flirtatious storyline with one of Simran's aunts brought the whole house down was definitely a surprise to me. The last two songs descended on the audience like manna from the heavens. It was a good time, observing these reactions, sharing them and just appreciating getting this experience.

For the most part, though, this was the same movie I'd fallen in love with when seeing it for the first time, and the movie I still fiercely adored. I know it's not the perfect movie, and on an intellectual level I can completely understand all the various reasons why others find it over-rated or cheesy or just plain unlikable. And yet, myself, I can't see any of those things when I watch it. DDLJ is a favourite, in a way where it doesn't matter whether it's a classic or not, even though it's nice to have one's love for a film shared by others.

Even if you don't love DDLJ, if you are ever in Mumbai and have a free afternoon, make the journey to go see this film in this particular context. It's a beautiful, old theater, the tickets are very cheap, and it's an experience that is truly a must for any fan of Indian films.

30 Days of Film - Day 29.

29. A movie from your childhood

When you begin watching Indian films aged 16, it's largely debatable whether you can have a childhood favourite. A teenage favourite?

Regardless, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was maybe the third or fourth Hindi film I watched and probably the first one I properly fell in love with. I've waxed poetic about the film, and how it may not be that same magical experience for everybody, but on me it certainly worked like a charm. I can certainly see the film's flaws and problems, but it remains a film I'll gladly rewatch. The chemistry works, the story works, and even if the soundtrack is not the most amazing Jatin-Lalit soundtrack out there, that works splendidly on me as well.

IFAC #22: My top five of Bollywood heroes.

I wrote a post about my favourite heroines nearly two years ago and decided to finally work out a top five ..ish of my favourite heroes. This one was arguably a lot harder to make. It bears mentioning that since male characters are at the forefront of pretty much every film, they tend to also be better-written and developed and simply more interesting. So this list was pretty much impossible to compose and I had to leave out a bunch of characters I love. I suppose more accurately this could be "top five of my favourites right on this moment", as it might look different if I typed it two months from now, or even tomorrow.

In no particular order.

Amar from Andaz Apna Apna

I know you're all thinking, what, seriously? Yes. Seriously. Heroes come in all sorts; ranging from pacifist to violent, poetic to plain-spoken, funny to serious, but rarely are they as mistakenly ambitious and as absolutely certain of themselves as Amar is. He's an absolute riot as the selfish, cocky, confident bewakoof (fool) that he is, and I love him for it. I think more often than not, my love for an actor boils down to one role that I absolutely loved them in, and for Aamir it's probably this one. I liked a lot of what I saw of him after AAA, but Amar was something else. Truly.

Raj from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge

Oh how cliché of me. But as I've said before, Raj is the reason I will always love Shahrukh on some level, even if I don't understand what his biggest fans see in him, or why he's king over all others. There's something so great and simple about this character - he's an inconsiderate goof but learns to be more than that, and ends up being the quintessential romantic hero. And he maintains that sense of humor throughout the movie. It's just wonderful.

Rikki from Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
and
Bunty/Rakesh from Bunty aur Babli

Two Abhishek Bachchan characters get to share this spot simply because I couldn't really choose between them. BaB was the film where I knew I had to see more of this actor, but both roles sort of encapture why I love Abhishek so much. They're both funny, goofy characters, but terribly lovable because of it. The sort of roles I think Abhishek was truly meant for .. though I don't want to undermine the quality of his serious roles, either.

Santosh from Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana

The more I think about the parameters of this post, the more characters I want to include. It's tough, especially considering how I now notice similarities between these heroes; they all seem to be carved out of the same tree. Most of them are more funny than romantic, which is exactly the kind of thing I don't mind at all. NVNN takes from DDLJ and Maine Pyaar Kiya, both movies I really enjoyed. I'm not sure how much Santosh as a character takes from Prem and Raj, but I do know I love him, at all stages of his journey, from the hyper child to the determined young man.

What's interesting is that I also noticed how similar my favourite heroine characters were - and how no film, at least according to these lists, has both my favourite heroine types and my favourite hero types in them. I guess it's all about how a film is a driven by one character. The heroines I named definitely seemed to be driving the story in their films - at least in some ways. In other instances, the hero is usually the one who the film is centered around. Sometimes it's pretty much equal between the two (like BaB).

Why not take a course on interior decoration? *

Internet is one amazing enabler, I can tell you that. Not only is it the thing that allowed me to get into Bollywood beyond those 60 minutes of K3G that were my first encounter with Indian cinema, it has also been the reason my interest is alive and kicking, and also allowed me to decorate my room accordingly. I got some new posters last week, and redecorated my walls so I thought I'd share the results with you.

In the above picture we see the oldest Bollywood poster I have, one Devanagari one of DDLJ, celebrating Yash Raj Films' silver jubilee. I love the poster to pieces; not only is it gorgeous, I love deciphering the writing on it, and am glad to tell you the lines at the very top are lyrics from "Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna"!

Next to DDLJ is a new addition; a Sholay poster celebrating "first time in cinemascope 4 track optical sound!". I have no idea what that means but I really like the poster; it's full of fire, full of embers and full of action! You also get the title in Devanagari and the characters besides Veeru and Jai in the smaller pictures on top.

I have a weakness towards Devanagari in film posters, so next to the firey Sholay one, we have a cheesy Devanagari poster of Keemat (a Sakshay classic, read about it here). Everything about it is unholily awkward, a hasty Photoshop job in other words, but I love it to death anyway.

So where do I acquire these posters, you may ask. eBay! Yep, the den of online sellers of all shapes and sizes, you can find all kinds of Bollywood memorabilia. My choice is store this time was The Absolute Indian Store, who I can personally vouch for and their overall rating on eBay is high, too, so I'm not the only satisfied customer. On eBay in general of course it pays to be a little wary.

Since I mentioned Keemat, the prices (see what I did there?) for these posters are not sky-high and at least at the places I've shopped at, the shipping has also been very reasonable. In fact, I've counted that I've been able to buy three Indian movie posters for the price of one Hollywood poster at a local store. Of course, the Bollywood posters can have slight fold marks and worse paper quality, but considering how pretty and awesome they are, who cares?

Here's my room door with another Sholay poster on it and a Tashan poster I ordered back in April. How I came to acquire two Sholay posters is a long story so I won't bore you with it. This second one has an older feel to it; whereas the first one has an email address for the printing company, this one does not, the paper is thinner and the design is messier. But it successfully displays all the elements of Sholay's action masala; you've got your angry heroes, your beautiful dancing village belle - in fact one of the reasons I really love this poster is because there are three depictions of Basanti in it! One as the damsel in distress with Gabbar, one of her with her tonga & Dhanno, and one from Holi Ke Din, dancing. Compare this two the two depictions of Gabbar you have in the poster.. Yes, I think we all know who the real main character of Sholay is now. And of course, the poster is Devnagari, my weakness.

The Tashan poster is pretty ace, I especially like how I accidentally placed it so that the text is actually horizontal whereas the poster itself is enormously tilted. I also enjoy the fact it's next to the Sholay poster; Tashan is so influenced by films of the 70's, it just feels very appropriate.

Last but not least, on the other side of the room, next to the window and overlooking my bed, is this poster for the coloured 2004 version of Mughal-e-Azam. I've actually never seen the coloured version but the poster is really lovely, complete with elephants and the tag line: "The Biggest Indian Film Ever" - can't argue with that! Interestingly, the only makers the poster mentions is the director K. Asif and the music director Naushad.

I admit my criteria for this particular selection of film posters is eclective. While surfing eBay for posters, I overlooked many, many favourite movies because I didn't like the design of the poster. On the other hand, I picked Keemat despite the campy design. When I was done setting up the posters, I realized I had posters of three of the arguably biggest Hindi films ever made, and then two posters of cheesy Sakshay ventures that never made it big in the box office (or in most people's minds). How's that for a mixed bag? Regardless, the posters make me feel at home in my small flat.

* This, as some of you may recognize, is a spoken word line in the Hum Tum song "Ladki kyun". It just seemed all too appropriate.

The unavoidable Khan.

Isn't there enough talk in the world about this man right here, Shahrukh Khan? When even a Finnish paper has a small bit about his stardom and Berlin visit (and a mention that his latest, Om Shanti Om is screening at Helsinki International Film Festival), it's a sign that either everything that can be said about the man has already been said, or that you can simply discuss him all eternity.

I'd prefer if it was the former, but then I think back the last seven days of my life, and it has to be said: I've had plenty of Shahrukh this week.

A week ago I saw Chak De India (also at HIFF!), one of those Shahrukh films I'd been avoiding because it hadn't really interested me (simple as that!). However, I was glad to discover this was not really a Shahrukh Khan movie as much as it was a film where Shahrukh Khan plays a lead character. Some of you might be raising your eye-brows, but those of you who've seen plenty of King Khan know exactly what I mean.

I really enjoyed Chak De India, because as stated previously, it's these girls who get to play center stage. It's a sports movie, but definitely among the best, most moving ones I've seen, full stop. Girl power at the core, Shahrukh's character Kabir Khan also has his own plotline, but just as important, if not more so, are the individual storylines of the female hockey team's players and in typical sports film fashion, the team spirit that allows you to overcome any obstacle.

Another refreshing change in the film was the lack of "negative nationalism", or in other words, extremely caricature-like negative portrayal of non-Indian characters. The foreigners are only enemies on the hockey field, and there were no racist or xenophobic insults exchanged.

The following day I watched Om Shanti Om for the third time, and I must say I find the movie less enjoyable, less encaging and more overrated with each viewing. I love me some inside jokes, and some scenes are undoubtedly as hilarious as ever (Abhishek and Akshay steal the show at Filmfare, and the build up to Dard-e-Disco picturization is great) but overall the movie just fails to keep me interested. Shahrukh's parodic hamming it up is no longer sympathetic and everything is just so distanced, I can't really believe in the characters or the story. As my friend put it, "great collection of scenes". But the best movies should be more than the sum of their parts, right?

I guess I just got a Shahrukh-overdose. And yet, today when deciding what to start my relaxing weekend with, I went with my favourite movie of his: Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

It's difficult to explain why I have such a special relationship with this movie in particular. I guess the most important thing is that it is built exactly like that; a personal relationship. I didn't fall in love with DDLJ because millions of Indians had, or because everybody who liked Bollywood had. At the get go it was simply a film I saw with two stars I wanted to see in more films, Kajol and Shahrukh Khan. I hadn't heard any of the hype. It captivated me even without subtitles, and once I saw it with subtitles, I was even more smitten. It had flaws, too, no doubt, and even today I am very hesitant about calling it 'the best' of anything. At the same time, it holds a certain magic for me not many other movies do.

And Shahrukh as Raj is the kind of charming perfection even the man himself hasn't been able to duplicate in anything since (of course, this being merely my own view). As I was rewatching, I realized it's a combination of a lot of small things; the way he calls her "Senorita" even though the story about the Spanish girlfriend sounds a little made up, the smug expression on his face each time he tells her "nothing can go wrong" and the embarrassment when something, of course, does go wrong. But also the big things: the care-free attitude and the promise that he'll be serious when he falls in love, a promise which he of course fulfills..

Whatever the director Aditya Chopra is working on with Shahrukh right now, I know not to expect it to bring out the kind of feelings I have for DDLJ. But I suppose so long as it works, I'll be happy.