Thursday, 19 November 2009

• Come on India! (At The Movies In Bangalore)

  You all are familiar with my aversion to leaving my house but when I heard the novel "Push" by Sapphire was made into a movie called Precious I raced out of the house, dragging my mom, to a movie theater 40 minutes away just to see it.
  

  
  We got there 40 minutes early, and our show was sold out. We waited in line anyway, and by the time we got to the front we got tickets for the next show, 40 minutes away. We went to go get seats in the theater and there was a line to wait to sit in the theater when the movie was still 40 minutes away.
  
  

  
  Life is Precious. Source.
  

  
  

  As you can imagine, by the time we sat down it would only take a matter of moments before it was packed from front to back. The wait and the excitement for such a radically different movie definitely created an air of antsy-ness, and the sheer volume of people didn't allow for a single significant moment in the movie (which, lets be real, was every moment) to go un-reacted-to. 
  
  The entire audience and I, packed in tightly like on a rollercoaster, reacted openly and unitedly throughout every twist and turn. There were small children in the theater which I didn't understand because of the outstanding vulgarity of parts of the movie, but at the same time, it's such an important movie to be seen that I can see why you'd want young people to see it.
  
  Like a theme park ride, every dreadful line we waited in was worth it; partly because of the operatic emotion of the movie, partly because of the mere impatience caused by the wait, mostly because of the movie's limited-release which caused people from far and wide to flock to the same theater and pack into the already large stadium seating.
  
  Americans are rarely so psyched out to see a movie, but in India such an experience is common for every Bollywood film release.
  
  

  
  Source.
  

  
  I last visited Bangalore (where my family in India resides) in August 2001, and throughout the whole visit my relatives begged me to see a movie. I didn't speak Hindi and those movies are so long, often over three hours. I felt I would be bored and annoyed, but I agreed to finally see an extremely anticipated film at the time: Lagaan.
  
  We had to go to the box office early in the day and we waited in line for hours with hundreds of people. By the time we finally got tix, we went home, got ready, got the whole family together-even the young kids, and headed back out to see the movie. We got there more than an hour early and the seating of the theater recalled the seating at Carnegie Hall. Packed in on velveteen seats, the movie began.
  
  I didn't need to speak Hindi to understand the full weight of every emotional rise and fall within in the movie. The audience was united in their outrage, sadness, and moments of riotous laughter.
  
  

  
  The facade of a movie theater in Bangalore. Yeah, movie theaters there have facades. Source.
  

  
  In a climactic scene where the boys of a small Indian village are playing cricket against their British counterparts, there is a point where the teams are tied, and one person needs to break it in order to forgo payment on some broke-making taxes. The audience was overcome with a chilling silence, not a baby wailed nor a child fidgeted, every head in the arena was statuesque, every eye pinned on the screen and unblinking. Amidst this stone-cold serious moment, from some random corner in the theater a voice erupted-in the thickest Indian accent imaginable-
  
  "COME ON IN-DI-A!!!!!"
  
  The entire room instantaneously fell into hysterical pride, clapping and wooing before even the movie moved on from the moment.
  
  Without even speaking Hindi, every dreadful line I waited in was worth the wait.
  
  What are your thoughts?
  

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