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<\/p>\ni’m a bad boyfriend. i whined, i weedled, i nagged, until i convinced my girlfriend to spend saturday, our traditional datenight, watching a bollywood movie on the big screen. <\/p>\n
there’s been a bollywood movie playing down at the local multiplex every week for a while now, but this is the first time that i managed to catch it. it’s significant that a commercial-mainstream theater is showing these. austin has a highly developed system of alternative, indie, and underground film venues. bollywood isn’t showing at any of these, because it’s not the hipster film style of the moment (south korean revenge films are). it’s showing at the local cinemark because there’s an actual market for it in the community at large. the tickets cost a quarter more than a normal film ticket, but then the movie’s a third longer than a normal film.<\/p>\n
"i would like two for ‘jhoom barabar jhoom’," i told the ticket guy. until i actually saw the film card in the slot on the kiosk (a card that looked as slickly printed and designed as the title card for the "knocked up" movie) i had worried that we had driven way down the interstate to end up at the wrong venue.<\/p>\n
"i think you said it wrong," the GF scolded me as we walked into the startlingly cold lobby (i speculated that multi-plex’s keep their airconditioner set so low for the same reason that jails do, i.e.: to retard the spread of disease among the closely packed inmates). "That’s not what it said on the sign."<\/p>\n
"no, look." we passed through the theater entrance which was labelled with the same slick title card. "it says, ‘jhoom barabar jhoom’."<\/p>\n
"jhoom barabar jhoom!" said the indian man behind me with a much better indian accent. <\/p>\n
"see? i TOLD you. ‘jhoom barabar jhoom’!" i shared a quick grin with the man behind me who appeared to be taking his daughter to the movie. i could tell that we shared a similar excitement, an anticipation of a magical cinematic experience. as a kid i always felt this way before a movie. i knew that soon i would see han solo fighting for his life against evil, or something equivalent. but that feeling is very rare now, drowned in cinematic commercialism and the cynical understanding that i’m getting fleeced at the box office for a second-rate michael bay flick that’s been carefully crafted to give me the same-old-same-old.<\/p>\n
(i’ve determined that the next time i’m at one of these venues, or at the indian market, to start a conversation with someone about bollywood. hell, i’ve considered having this conversation with indian call-center women. right now i know exactly ZERO people who know ANYTHING about bollywood. i’m living in a bollywood vacuum, sucking what little i know about it off wikipedia and the imdb. you don’t know how lonely it is.)<\/p>\n
the theater’s auditorium seating was about a third filled, with a mix of 80% indians (families with kids as well as groups of friends out on the town) with the remainders whities. this breakdown is important, because the movie has a scene where the heroine flashbacks to when she was a little girl. she’s standing in the middle of a monumental anglican church and she’s making a vow to god that she would never "marry a dark-skinned man who was either indian or pakistani, but instead marry a 100% british man who was white like Yourself." am i supposed to laugh at that?, i wondered as knowing\/scandalized titters criss-crossed the theater.<\/p>\n
the movie started off with an honest-to-gosh trailer, an ad for a movie about a women’s field hockey team. using a rhyming street-wise hinglish rap, shahrukh khan introduces every single member of the 12-woman team. yes, it’s a long trailer. the rap’s chorus had the women shaking their sticks at the camera and shouting "get out of my way, get out of my way, get out of my way!" <\/p>\n
at this point, the GF admitted that this was "pretty cool".<\/p>\n
i don’t want to go into too much detail about the movie itself, it’s a romantic comedy (with a surprising amount of racy sex-talk for a bollywood movie as well as TWO actual kisses) that’s filmed largely in london and paris. it starts off with an indian man and a pakistani-english woman meeting at a london train station. as they wait for a delayed train, they tell stories about the respective fiances they’re waiting for. these stories involve giant dance-numbers in front of recognizable london and paris landmarks. a bollywood chorus-line in front of the louvre, itself worth the price of admission.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
amitabh bachchan has the role of "cabaret MC". dressed like a gypsy stevie-ray vaughn his only function is to lead the chorus-lines of lithe londoners inbetween his son’s scenes of romantic farce. abishek bachchan has taken a lot of criticism as being a pale imitation of his father, but he acquits himself well in this movie, playing the part of a rake-ish and irrepressable street-con. mostly he plays the uber-macho cop in bollywood action movies, so it was impressive to see actual acting come out of him.<\/p>\n
"jhoom barabar jhoom" is the technical and stylistic peak of the bollywood form. it’s as complete in and of itself as "hard boiled" was, just before hong kong action films hit the american market. and to see it on the big screen (as they say in india) "you have got to be kidding me." bollywood on a 14" monitor is interesting. in the theater it is a maelstrom. the crescendoing chorus of the signature\/title song is designed to uplift and thrill the heart like a john williams symphony. the color. the glitz. the dancing. the —<\/p>\n
you people totally don’t know what i’m talking about, do you?<\/p>\n
dammit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
i’m a bad boyfriend. i whined, i weedled, i nagged, until i convinced my girlfriend to spend saturday, our traditional datenight, watching a bollywood movie on the big screen. there’s been a bollywood movie playing down at the local multiplex … Continue reading