This is actually a re-post. Pulled out from a couple of months old Facebook note I had written, when Delhi Belly was more important than Anna Hazare!
So, turns out that the much-respected movie star who promotes Incredible India, doesn't really feel much shame in promoting
DK Bose for his nephew. Yes Aamir- We hate you (like we love you).
Truth be told, and be told first- I'm writing this
after seeing the movie, and after being one of the first people to
LMAO at the song that they've used to promote this movie. This post is coming up from someone who spews abuses in every sentence, and may seem slightly hypocritical. That said, this post isn't about ranting and raving how the Indian society and it's moral values have gone for a toss- there are people who can better me at saying and doing that. Neither is it a post from the heart of a self-confessed serial cusser, who finds fake approval for his ways from the movie.
There's a lot of things that stirred my mind to write this whole thing up, one being the snippets of the radio show I heard on the facebook page of RJ Dhvanit, on Ahmedabad (it's
Amdavad, actually )Radio Mirchi. The spectrum of people who commented on this whole issue of the film being promoted in a vulgar manner, was pretty interesting- a prominent lawyer-politician, a well-known psychiatrist, and a renowned Gujarati contemporary poet/lyricist- all of these against a common listener who represented the youth and said he was fine with this whole thing. What commands respect is the way Dhvanit has been handling the whole issue- he's pledging his opinions and asking for people's reactions on it, and making it a very mature radio talk show, rather than making it a raging debate like they do it on the news channels.
At the price of sounding diplomatic, I'd say, I kind of stand somewhere in the middle. There's an interesting duality between films and society. Some say that films influence the mindset of a society and/or a generation, some say otherwise. Screenplays, stories and films aren't generated out of thin air. Yes, they are a figment of the writer/director's imagination, but to an extent, there is a societal influence to the whole thing. The writer isn't sitting at Mars and making his movie, right? What you write, what you express, always is influenced by what you see around you, consciously or subconsciously; too little or too much. That said, the reverse also holds true- my then 10 year old cousin didn't blush as much seeing Spiderman kiss his beau while hanging upside down, while yours truly, a product of the Hum Paanch and Small Wonder generation, had goosebumps watching Titanic at the age of 13
.
Back to the movie- I'm no movie critic, and I NEVER take movie critics seriously because I feel they're those snobby people who ridicule every movie and love only the seemingly disinteresting and generally incomprehensible artsy ones. But Delhi Belly had a story, had some good performances, and some moments where you felt the director has a knack for making good movies. Yes, the promotion of the movie was a shame, and I remember reading this somewhere, probably in the Sunday Times, that the problem is with the Censor board adopting double standards for films like Delhi Belly and Pyaar ka Punchnama (recent personal favorite!) as opposed to censoring those b-grade
Champa Chudail type movies. Agreed.
The sole point behind this loquacity being, unlike those movies back in the day, like Masti and Kya Kool Hai Hum, Delhi belly has a plot. At some points, the humor is crass. But it isn't as story-less and cheap as Kya Kool Hai Hum, the movie which, if I remember correctly first introduced the DK Bose term. You shouldn't trash a movie because it apparently glorifies a language you proudly use while fighting with a rickshaw river who scratched your Honda City.e
I wonder what Aamir would be singing right now- "Main karun to saala character dheela hai??"
~ A silent spectator sitting 8000 miles away and missing all the brouhaha over this thing in India :)
