Friendship, Love, Forgiveness and Remembrance

Before I start on the actual business of this post, I would like to point out that 'monads' is not a fake word. Check this out.

Also, major SPOILER alerts.
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When I watched Dalapathi last Sunday (yet again - will I ever get tired of this movie?), I wondered if they were showing the movie because it was Friendship Day. The thought didn't strike me until I discovered a random channel showing Boys simultaneously. Dalapathi is currently my favourite Mani Ratnam movie, for reasons ranging from deeply personal to highly technical. But the one reason that I want to share in this post (I'll write another long one on Dalapathi sometime.) is the portrayal of a friendship. Mani Ratnam does play the senti card, and plays it quite heavily too. But as a viewer, you never feel its melodrama. Compare this with the recent Nadodigal. This movie is about three friends who help one of their friends run away and marry a girl. Now, this couple are children of rival politicians. In the bloodshed that ensues, the friends who help them suffer severe losses - one loses hearing, another loses a leg and a third gets an ugly gash over his eye (he also loses a girl forever - but the girl is so irritating that you hardly empathise with his loss).

So far so good.

Then the friends discover that the couple have broken up - that they only had lust, no love. So, these friends decide they will kill the couple. Throughout the movie, there are extremely sentimental references to friends and friendship. After a point, I cringed at each mention of the word 'friend'. The movie suggests, on many occasions, that the sole purpose of having friends is so that they can help you run away with your girl/guy at some point.

Which is why a friend who didn't like the movie got asked, "Yen, Meydam? Onga love work-out aaidchaa?"

Nadodigal as the title suggests is a nomadic film. It is never clear on what it wants to say or prove (or disprove). Its biggest drawback, though, is that it doesn't even have good-looking people to make the ticket price worth it.

Love Aaj Kal doesn't suffer from this problem. Deepika looks absolutely delicious. I think her yumminess in this movie is only topped in recent times by Sushma Reddy in that Limca ad (I'm telling you - if I had found any theatre showing that ad before the movie, I'd buy a ticket, watch the ad and cut. Even four shows a day.). Harleen (whose real name is being kept secret, although the internet reveals she's some Brazilian model) looks really cute too! Love Aaj Kal is a strange movie - its humour is smart and subtle, its romance is unconvincing (and a bit sudden and random), its 'message' is not really a message, its point is a bit unclear. If Imtiaz Ali has some insights on love, he's not making them very apparent. One theme that runs through his three movies has been this sudden discovery of love for the person next to you, after being engaged/married to some third party. A friend turns into your 'love', and you discover it a bit late, always.

But I enjoyed myself. I'm not complaining.
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The most enjoyable, layered, complicated, honest movie I've watched in a while is Blessy's Bhramaram - in Malayalam, starring Mohan Lal. A stranger turns up at a man's house claiming to be his old friend from school. The stranger knows lots of details about this man's school and class and teachers, but his name doesn't seem familiar. As layers peel off the stranger's story, and its emotional core is thrown open to you in a powerful last scene, you are shocked, saddened, silenced. You're blown away.

The movie deals with forgiveness and remembrance. It deals with both a society's inability to forgive, and an individual's ability to do so (even if it might have been out of necessity). It deals with raw emotions of a man whose life has been blown apart by his past catching up with him unexpectedly.

I don't want to reveal more, because this is a movie I'd hate to spoil for anyone. Watch it. Watch Mohan Lal take on a most difficult character's role and play it with accomplished ease. Watch a relatively unknown director take his steps towards superstardom.