#CMCExperiences

Those who know me, will you believe if I told you that for last seven days (21st to 27th) I was supposed to reach on time twenty-eight number of times; out of which I reached late only once by exactly only one minute?

After being encouraged by TSCMC faculty, we attended #MAMI, aka Mumbai Film Festival and here’s what my first experience was like. (This is for Preeti, Rohan, Pooja, Harsh and everyone I promised to share this with.) So let’s do this. Reading this may require a while (and guts for some others). Spoilers. There are lots and I’ve marked them with (SPOILER) so drop a couple of lines when you see it maybe. And the comments aren’t supposed to be ‘neutral reporting’ because it’s ‘my take’ on the movies I watched. Ready?
Not to mention, each day brought some new learning, experience or insight for me. It had to. Never had I ever watched a movie alone on the big screen. Trust me, it’s way better an experience than all those movies you go to with your dates and end up watching none of it. In a film festival, it’s just you. There may be a team for discussions and recommendations. But a choice of what appeals to you that turns into a verdict for what goes to your schedule is only yours. Some may find this exaggerated but it did make me feel self-sufficient.
Then comes the kind of stuff I’ve seen in these seven days. I don’t know where to begin and can’t decide what was best of them. For the first time, I watched a movie where it seemed as if they forgot to cut and the scenes went on slowly and steadily like day-to-day life (The Woman Who Left). Some movies felt like having been based on people around me. I watched ‘Madly’ and fell in love with Radhika Apte all over again. Also got a crush on Narges Rashidi from ‘Under the Shadow’. Something to look forward to! Something unusual was people masturbating on screen. We’re no longer alien to sex or gore in movies but masturbation surprised me the first time. (Is it just me?) Then it happened in every alternate movie and I got adjusted.
As for the movie that I liked the most, I can’t choose between ‘On the Silver Globe’ and ‘Multiple Maniacs’. Both belong to ‘restored classics’ section. Special thanks to Harsh Desai who encouraged me to go for both. ‘On the silver globe’ was a story of astronauts who leave Earth, hoping to leave all its problems behind. They settle on another planet and have children. A new human civilization with as less socio-cultural influence as possible comes to life. As they go on, they turn out to become as lost, confused and hopeless as humanity. They begin to worship imaginary Gods, kill people in wars and in the name of religion, and all this while they wait for a ‘saviour’ who will come and get them rid of the‘evil’ proclaimed by them. (SPOILER) When he arrives they crucify him (literally!). The director was made to leave his homeland for the movie being too scandalizing and somehow managed to release it (1988). It’s an incomplete film, parts of which are filled by narrations explaining what happened or sometimes literally reading out the screenplay. The movie suggests that all the problems with the world today are just the results of us humans being our delusional and greedy selves by nature.
‘Multiple Maniacs’ is pure troll. It’s a fucking black & white 1970 movie, yet manages to top my list. The whole movie is a series of one bizarre event after another. A woman performs a ‘rosary-job’ (rosary version of hand-job) on another in a church, out of nowhere a huge lobster comes into screen and rapes a woman, leaving her bleeding and ecstatic. You have to watch it to believe it.
Another mentionable movie was ‘The Neon Demon’. The movie has some content that made a lot of people from the audience get up and leave the fuck before the movie ended. My obsession of the dark things apart, I loved the movie immensely. A couple of jealous models kill an upcoming model because they envy the ‘X factor’ in her beauty that they don’t seem to match. In the end it looks like they’ve returned to their normal lives after her death. (SPOILER) Later, one of them pukes a beautiful human eye out and it is revealed that obsessed with their pursuit of beauty, the two models have bathed in her blood and eaten her corpse in order to ‘consume’ the essence and beauty of the young model. The model who puked, feels sick and cuts herself open, saying she needs to get her out of herself. The other model however, taken by the beauty of the dead model’s eye, immediately eats it. We see a lot of gore for gore sake on screen. But this was one of the stories where it was explained with (twisted, yes, but) reason and logic.
Certain characters and scenes left their mark on me.
1. Like the charming old lady in ‘After The Storm’ who silently watches men screw-up their lives since generations, yet manages to be the source of inspiration and positivity that binds the family together that is otherwise falling apart. Must Watch.
2. There’s Michelle from ‘Elle’ who shares an extremely complicated relationship with a man. From catching him red handed at another of his several attempts of raping her, later consenting into the abuse, to finding out she isn’t his only victim and hence telling to his face that she will have to get him arrested.
3. Una from ‘Una’, seeking confrontation from a man old enough to be her father who convinced himself that he loves her in the past, in order to be free of the guilt as he abused her and confused her into believing that she loves him too. Later in life as they abruptly move on, with the abuser having married a woman suitable for his age, Una shows up at his workplace and eventually his home, seeking answers. Scared to lose ‘reputation’, he tries to get her thrown out of both.
4. Anie from wild who kidnaps a wild wolf, (SPOILER) gets him perform oral sex on her using menstruation as bait, eventually makes him accept her love and runs away into the wild with him by her side.
5. The mother and daughter in ‘Sandstorm’ who firmly stand by each other when the husband and father eventually fails them. Must watch.
6. The hero father that takes on a battle with devil himself, in order to protect his daughter in ‘The Wailing’.
7. Little Icare in ‘My Life as a Courgette’ who insists on being called as ‘Zucchini’.
8. ‘4 days in France’, a love-story where lover of a novelist takes off ‘on a break’ and starts ignoring his calls. The novelist chases him with a dating app, after finding out his boyfriend has registered on it.
9. The X & O’s game in ‘Clash’, a movie about Egyptian post-coup unrest that metaphorically brought out how nobody won in the end. Must watch.
Certain movies were action-packed, where larger than life things happen. (SPOILER) In these stories, being a corrupt asshole or a pet-beating motherfucker gets you shot by a common ‘nice guy’ who’s had enough. Assault a woman and she’ll slit your throat. (‘A Touch of Sin’.) These movies give you pretty dreams.
I actually went and watched (though sitting in the first row,) good old ‘Teesri Manzil’ on the big fucking screen and the experience was oh so precious! Shammi Kapoor, Asha Parekh, Helen, Prem Chopra. You need to watch at least one of these movies from bollywood’s golden era to experience what it, the music especially, feels like in a theatre.
Very few other movies, on the other hand, were disasters. Like ‘Hounds of Love’ and ‘417 miles’. Nothing happens throughout the movie. Or ‘Mango Dreams’. Too much happens in it (that too around a nice concept) and the movie manages to suck anyway. ‘Lost in Paris’, almost everyone loved what looked like another movie from Romedy Now to me.
Next, the people I met. Almost all of us delegates wore our badges all day. As suggested by Javed Sajawal, who encouraged me to observe people during the fest, I talked to and eavesdropped on as many people as I could. It’s a beautiful thing to just say ‘hey’ and start talking anyone, anywhere wearing that i-card and have so much to talk about that you don’t even remember to ask their names. That stranger who was as happy as me to see Zeb and Haniya’s Laili Jaan having been used perfectly well in a film. The other one who sung along to ‘aaja aaja, main hoon pyaar tera’ knowing every line from the lyrics by heart, just like me. Someone on the metro, whom I asked why he’s headed home so early when there’s plenty of time and options to catch one more movie and he explained himself as if he owed it. The lady with greying hair sitting next to me, who explained my ‘why would she do that’ as a in the movie, a young mother who lost her baby, stole one from another woman and disappeared into a restroom for a few minutes at the cost of getting accused of kidnapping by her (‘Dog Days’).
All I have to explain my experience of the seven days is the crazy withdrawal I’m going through. It’s all come to a sudden halt from seven crazy days of watching 4 movies per day, sleeping anytime you get home and finish planning your next day, waking up quite early every morning to make your bookings through an online window that lasted literally 20 seconds. I miss being obsessed to get my hands (eyes?) on that one movie or two, the concept of which I’d be so sold on. I miss running all over the city, on a tight schedule to get to various screening locations. Fuck, I even miss being sleep deprived. I’d rarely had deserving reasons to sacrifice my sleep on.
I’m sure my fellow participants will agree with me on this one. (Agam, Charmy, Dishi, Jash, Jeet, Nikita, Rhea) Now that it’s over and we’ve returned to our normal (-is subjective) routines. One of these days, we’re going to go to theaters watch a movie with friends, family or on our own maybe. Just one movie and it’ll get over in a couple hours. And we’ll be like, “That was cute for starters. Now get me some main-course!”