Going To The Movies

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Last week the wife and I decided to go watch the latest suspense thriller at a multiplex cinema. After paying a bomb for the tickets, we proceeded to enter the auditorium and I held open the door for my wife. Soon after she got in, a group of about 7 or 8 people wiggled their way in, while I was still left holding the door!

Shortly after we fumbled our way to our respective seats, the national anthem began. I noticed a young man nearby talking into his mobile phone. I ‘ssshhhed’ him while gesturing towards the screen. The man turned to me and said with a deadpan face “pehle nahi suna hai kya?” (Haven’t you heard it before?)

The brief silence in the auditorium lasted only till the film’s censor certificate, after which several cine-goers resumed their friendly banter and mobile conversations. It was really difficult to concentrate on the credits, which I always hope to read attentively.

A myriad of interesting characters began to appear on screen, setting up a chilling mystery.  But my attention was diverted to a young girl in the next seat, talking loudly to her friend.  They seemed to be discussing their Christmas plans. Very politely I requested them to be quiet. They apologized but continued their chat in irritatingly loud whispers. ‘New Year parties are so expensive ya. They are asking 10,000 bucks’. I tried my best to concentrate on the movie that had started to become intriguing.

The scene was tense. The atmosphere was chilling. The hero was stealthily following a suspect in the middle of the night, when I got a sudden jolt. Not from the movie, but from a patron seated behind me, in the form of a kick! I learned later that he was looking for something he had dropped under my seat.

During the interval, my wife filled me in with links from the story that I had missed. When the interval ended and the hall went dark, people rushed to their seats, hands filled with  snacks, stamping away to glory at the feet of those already in their seats. Once again, I missed out on the opening scenes as a large woman tripped over 3 or 4 of us and dropped her samosas in the process. 

In the film, some ferocious goons were giving chase to a rogue when someone near my aisle seat shouted “MASALA UTTAPPA”!  It happened to be the voice of a snack-bar waiter. A family in the front row hungrily laid claim to the south-Indian snack. Then, as the waiter stopped in front of me to deliver the goods, to collect his payment and fiddle around for change, I lost the on-screen rogue before the goons did. Having no idea how the chase played out.

As the waiter had just started moving back, the buyer shouted at him “Where is the green chutney I ordered?” The waiter ventured back into the row to check and pointed something out to the man. The man’s little son screamed “but this is blue chutney!” The waiter barked back that it was green.  It so happened that the screen showed a shot of the ocean, which reflected a blue tinge on the little boy’s chutney!                             

Like this the carnival went on in the theatre, making one feel that Indian audiences only go to multiplexes to enjoy a picnic with friends and families. It seems like they are least concerned with the nuances of a film that directors toil so hard to communicate. Nor do they care about the discerning viewer in the audience who may truly love his cinema.

Just as the film’s climax took an unexpected twist, leaving my jaw dropping with astonishment, the hall went haywire with the heavy rhythm of “MEHBOOBA, MEHBOOBA” (from the film SHOLAY). All of us began looking helter–skelter for the source of this aberration, eventually tracing it to a man in the back row who barked into his phone “I told you no, don’t call me, I am in an important meeting right now!”                                       

Eventually, after many such hullaballoos, the movie came to its end. The wife and I attempted to put together various pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but realized that the distractions in the hall had left us somewhat cheated.

So we both decided to watch the film again. But this time at home, on a DVD!

--By Manu