Comfort in Familiar Films, Not Always New Discoveries

Rita Kothari, Professor of English and Linguist at Ashoka University

How is the picture?- I asked. ‘It’s a one time watch’- I got the reply. Leave it, save money, save time, I told myself. Nobody paid attention to the talk. Many films come and go and similar sentences are heard. Although I am born of that breed, when ‘Sholay’ was watched 20 times and ‘Deewar’ 30 times.

You will say where such films are made these days, and your statement is absolutely justified. But is it just a matter of good and bad films, or has our relationship with films itself changed? It can also be asked that our relationship with time has changed and not watching films 10-20 times is an example of that changing relationship. My life is not made just by watching movies, not just by listening and humming songs, but by seeing life through movies.

TS Eliot says- ‘I have measured-out my life with coffee spoons.’ That means I have measured my life with coffee spoons. But I will say the same thing about Amitabh Bachchan’s films. Amitabh of seventies and eighties. After that I distanced myself from films again! Someone asks, how old were you when this or that incident happened? I start thinking, maybe I was this many years old when I saw ‘Deewar’.

What I mean to say is that our time was marked by films and we lived in the film era. This intense and deep relationship had many benefits, one of which was that we did not waste time unnecessarily on WhatsApp and social media. Our minds were filled with stories, songs and dialogues and we used to repeat filmy sayings the way people repeat couplets of Kabir or Rahim. For us she was no less than a couple. It is from them that we learn that sorrows come to everyone, that people will say something, it is the job of people to say etc.

In a society full of poverty, inequalities and violence, films would provide solace. Maybe that’s why we go there again and again. The stories were not always new and we always knew at what point they would end. There is no need to assume that we always discover new things. If this was the case then why would people go to see Ramlila again and again? There is a comfort in seeing something familiar.

However, if the film’s dialogues were in colloquial language, it would not have been considered a lie. Maybe that could have been considered a figure of speech only! I remember mother getting angry and saying to father – ‘I will not remain silent. Just like Meena Kumari says, I have to say the same!’ No one laughs after hearing this, but considers that anger more powerful. Now think how such a deep thing can be said after watching the film once!

Titles of films, lyrics of songs, expressions of love and shame – that is, an entire vocabulary created, decorated and embellished our language. This is how we understood that pain can also be sweet, that when we have to commit a misdeed, we can do so under the pretext of our hearts. You can express your courageous intentions by saying ‘Dil bekarar hai’. Just think, there are so many songs in which the heart has been made the medium – ‘Mere Dil Main Aaj Kya Hai, Tu Kahe To Main Bata Doon’ etc.

Sometimes the eyes would also work, because the denial on the lips would become a confession in the eyes. In a society where there is no privacy and the eyes of your family are on you, how will you keep an eye on someone properly? The matter would stop at the eyes. The hint was enough for the wise.

So let me return to where I started. Watching films again and again, making them a part of our lives – it represents a closeness, an excuse that we needed in the times we were living in. Our bodies, our sense of identity, our perception of time – everything has changed. Perhaps it is useless for me to compare these two different periods. The past is gone, it never comes again, Hafiz God is yours…

The stories of the films were not always new and we knew at what point they would end. There is no need to assume that we always discover new things. If this was the case then why would people go to see Ramlila again and again? (These are the author’s own views)

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