I have always enjoyed watching films, talking about them and reading about them. Right from the early days when Filmfare used to be less gloss and gossip and more about films, I’ve gobbled up reviews, write-ups and articles about cinema- both Bolly- and Hollywood.
Which is why a book titled ’50 films that changed Bollywood’ grabbed my attention and I went out and bought it and even finished reading it.(sort of a record for me nowadays)
The book talks about films from 1995-2015, which excludes many that I grew up watching, but nevertheless it was an interesting read.
What pleased me even more was that I have seen most of the films that the book mentions and also own quite a few of them- some in the form of illegal downloads and others as legally purchased VCDs and DVDs!
This spurred me on to dig them out, shake off the dust and make a ‘To-watch’ pile. (it’s right next to my To-read pile of books)
Watching a favourite film again is a lot like re-reading a much-loved book. The first time is usually to know what happens next and enjoy the other aspects like style, characters, language on the way. They’re all relished as part of the whole, not separately.
But re-visiting an old favourite takes away the pressure of wanting to know what happens next. Instead, one can just sit back and soak up all that went into making it such a favourite. One can linger over the most enjoyable parts and skip the not-so interesting ones. Thanks to technology, rewind, pause and fast-forward is as easy as turning a page.
It also becomes a discovery but back into known territory. You come across things that you may have missed before or forgotten how much you liked it the last time you were there. And now you can savour it all once more. Isn’t that why we like to eat our favourite foods time and time again, or want to re-visit places that made us happy?
Well, this is my project for the next few months- to watch as many of those 50 films featured in the book, maybe with a different perspective or maybe just to see how right I was in mine!
And so, the journey begins!
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