Possibly, very possibly, the most romantic movies I have seen, this one and its sequel.
Anil told me about it first, when I was in IIM Calcutta, sitting bleary-eyed in his room and burning truckloads of divX movies. “Very good movie”, he said, “Came out quite sometime back, not really a big hit or anything, but I liked it.” “What’s it about?”, I remember asking, and when he said it’s a romantic movie, I almost did not copy it to disc. But I did. And promptly forgot all about it until last November, when Prashant and I, walking down MG Road to the nearest Citibank ATM. ( Later, we found out that there was one right on Brigade road, and we needn’t have walked all the way, but I guess if we hadn’t, this conversation wouldn’t have occurred, and I wouldn’t have been writing this line.) We were talking movies, and from a long critique of Baise Moi, which appeared as a half-brained copy of Thelma and Louise, to talking about Susan Sarandon films and then to women-oriented ones, Uma Thurman and Kill Bill included, he suddenly asked me whether I had seen this movie. I had not, of course, and so for the next half an hour, I was given a from-the-heart lecture on it. Damn, all of a sudden I wished I had my divX movies here with me.
kvk mentioned it a couple of days later, and also mentioned that the sequel had just come out. What was this – the world seems to have seen this film before me, and everybody loved it! Something had to be done, and the next time I was in National Market, I asked them if this was around. I was shown a trashy Pierce Brosnan flick that had a similar name. Bleh. A couple of days later, Prashant found the sequel while rummaging around for Tarantino movies. “Give it a miss, it’s sure to be a camera-print version”, I suggested. He didn’t listen to me, thank the Lord.
So the other day, I was hanging around all alone in the house, a little too tired to watch a high-octane action movie, and a little too downbeat for a comedy. Let me watch something I generally wouldn’t watch, I thought. The only romantic movie around was the sequel, and ok, I watched it. Finished it. Watched the Making of-documentary ( it wasn’t a camera print, after all) Watched the film again, wishing all the while I was in Hyderabad.
I found the first movie at National Market a couple of days later, but it was part of a combination, and I didn’t really want to buy it that way. So I waited. Yesterday, Sasi went a little berserk at all the Bergman/Truffaut movies he saw there – and he ended up buying the combo-DVD as well. And so, as Mark Knopfler was playing at Palace Grounds, 2 kilometers away from where I live, I watched The Movie. Possibly, very possibly, the most romantic movies I have seen, this one and its sequel. Oh, did I just repeat myself?
Some of the conversations in the first movie sound contrived, I agree. It appears too easy, too spontaneous. But it’s beautiful. The second film is not perfect, but the way it takes the theme of urgency even further – it’s shot almost in real-time, and yes, the soundtrack *sigh*. The dialogues are a wee bit more realistic, maybe because the two lead stars chipped in with their own lines? Some of the lines make so much sense now after the first movie. The ending? There could have been no other.
Just for the record, I plan to watch both the movies again. Back to back. And with the right person.