What is not to like?

Finally managed to watch Dilwale this afternoon. It was as high on my watch list as the Star Wars movie. There was really only one reason I wanted to watch this movie. It was a  Shah Ruck Khan movie.

One needs to have a certain mindset to watch an SRK movie.. don't expect much of a plot for starters. Expect very predictable twists and turns. Great visuals and a background score that goes with the visuals, SRK hamming his way through the movie with the few scenes where he is actually doing more comic timing than anything else. 

The hopeless romantic in me always comes home humming the background tune from the movie and this one is no different. 

SRK movies for me have become the equivalent of Nat King Cole songs for baby boomers or so I am guessing. Somewhere some neurons fire in your brain and make connections between the past and present and you get all emotional for reasons that you cannot quite put a finger on. 

Don't understand why people were working hard to set my expectations really low for this movie. Yes, SRK and Kajol do look a little ridiculous in some scenes trying to pass for folks a good 20 years less than their age, and in this day of special effects they could have spent some more effort to make those scenes look natural but it was just another SRK movie. 

The locations in Iceland for the song "Gerua", where Kajol is running on a black beach in a yellow nine yards saree (it has to be at least nine yards), were just breathtaking! See for yourself..

Need to add every place on the backdrop to our travel list. The gold threaded designer sari that Kajol was wearing will be the next big hit for Dilwali.

As for me, I am happy as Yoda, still humming.. 

You dare call me a Servant?!

A cop abuses a witness trying to help identify a perpetrator.

An American of Indian descent who is new to India tells the cop "You are a public servant. How can you do this?"

The cop replies, "You called me a servant? Do I look like a servant to you?" and slaps the guy.

Guy slaps the cop back and ends up in jail.

When his uncle bails him out the cop tells the uncle "inform this kid that this is how things work in India"

This is just one of the scenes that caught my attention early on in "Delhi -6", a really well made movie that shows India for what it is, a place that is defined by a really large mass of people, a tangled web of interactions from every perspective, a potpourri of emotions, something so complex yet simple, something so simple yet complex, an everlasting absurdity of sorts that can be explained one way or another, a place where at times everything goes and at times nothing moves!

The greatness of this movie is the attention to detail. Every little piece of the jigsaw puzzle comes together so smoothly and you come out shaking your head, not because you saw something fantastic, but you saw something that happens for real, something that you know is true, because you have experienced most of these bits and pieces firsthand!

The only surprise is that a kid born and raised in America is even accepted as India's own in the earlier parts of the movie while his religious identity is questioned later because his dad is Hindu and mom is a Muslim. If there is one thing consistant about Bigotry, it is that bigotry is absolute. A real crowd would have equally questioned his "Indian-ness" or "his right to ask questions about things Indian or about India" because he is an American Citizen, but somehow they miss that part and it seemed weird.

But for that small deviation from reality, the movie does a fantastic job of painting the masses in everything from gory red, dove white, purple hues, monkey black, holy green to religious saffron!

The human mind is an amazing thing. The ability to live and let live is a quality of the mind that is not universal. Considering ,my recent frame of mind Delhi-6 offers a rare glimpse into the collective human psyche that makes or breaks a society. It also tells you in the nicest of ways to look for answers within!

Nicely done. Strongly recommended!

ps. Hope this movie wins international recognition for Cinematography. Simply fantastic. The music was great, but the visuals were simply breathtaking!

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By chance, if you are lucky *

You get to watch Luck by chance on DVD.

Maybe my expectations were too high after watching "Rock On"?

Konkona was great, even Isha was tolerable. Farhan was barely making the cut, and the music did not carry the movie.

Somehow my taste in movies has one lowest common denominator. No matter what the genre, the movie should keep moving forward! It should hold my attention. Any movie where I doze off or pull out my phone and have a temptation to check email, has disappointed me.

The first half of this movie was very well made. It was witty, funny, very natural and had everything going for it.

The second half was so predictable and at one point was just suspended .. it was like a feather hovering just before it takes another drop.. except it just hovered there, a little too long!

The last movie we (MIL and me) watched was Spellbound (the Hitchcock 1945 B/W movie) and watching this after that was not a good idea. We both came out saying "hmm.. that guy made a movie for almost 2 hours with 4 main characters and kept us engrossed and here we are dozing off in a 2009 movie".

We are now hoping for Delhi 6 in the coming weeks. We know the music is awesome..hope it moves us as well!

* Ps. I should add that in the second half the senior artists who were playing supporting roles were really showing off their acting talent and by comparison Farhan pales.

Moral of the story, dont have seasoned veterans play your supporting casts when you are making a movie about moviemaking with young leads!

pps. Note to self : going forward, lower expecations a tad before walking into a movie... dont expect much and be surprised!

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