My lil space

I can see Wordsworth turn in his grave at my modest attempt at poetry. So let me quit trying to employ any traces of my poetic talents.

The credit of this new found passion solely goes to my friend (lets call him X), who for reasons known only to real people, discovered the craze for watching critically acclaimed movies. The first in this genre that I watched was 'Y tu mama tambien' (literally meaning And your mother too - if your instincts tell you to think straight, DON'T). It is a coming to age tale of two teenagers in Mexico. At the end of the graphically explicit movie which apparently also depicted the political and economic realities in Mexico (you can take my word for the fact that these realities are easy to miss), I laughed to myself realizing why X was into critically acclaimed movies. The next step towards watching these offbeat movies was to watch the movies hosted by Google on Thursdays. I was skeptical about going to this the first time, especially because X was in the committee to decide the movies that were being played. I thought "critically acclaimed movies" was X's code word for the likes of my first pang at these movies and I wasn't sure if I should watch these movies with a large audience at my workplace. Unwillingly, I dragged myself to "Seduced and Abandoned", an Italian comedy by Pietro Germi. The name of the movie rang all possible warning bells and I mentally prepared myself not to giggle at those intimate scenes. Surprisingly, the movie was completely different, the story of a father who keeps up the family honor till his last breath concealing the fact that one of his daughter's womanhood was tainted by another daughter's fiance' in an extremely snoopy village. It reminded me a lot about the social circumstances in India.

The ball started rolling after that and I have watched a handful of these movies, notable amongst these being, Rashomon, Citizen Kane, Schindler's List, A Band's Visit, Life is Beautiful, Nowhere in Africa, Conversation with other women, Hotel Rwanda, No man's land, Kite Runner and many more that I can't remember off the top of my head now. One of the finest movies ever made in my opinion is Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa. It is a simple concept about human mind, best summarized below:
"Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings–the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem."
The story and the direction was brilliant and transgressed all linguistic, cultural and time boundaries.
Unlike most other movies, which took to dealing with popular sympathetic subjects like World War II, Jewish massacres, etc. Rashomon was a commonplace subject depicted beautifully through a murder mystery.

It has been quite a while since I have watched main stream cinema and I don't seem to miss them either. I believe that I now have an acquired taste for offbeat movies that are intellectually provoking. Most of these movies are in foreign languages, but they are every easy to relate to. Sometimes, I miss the point in these movies and reading reviews help. I have gone back to watch the movies to enjoy them the way they were meant to be viewed. For the first time, I could see the art in movie direction. While I was blissfully living in the world that my taste has become more classy, a funny incident happened (which I must quote here, is an exception). I was at a dinner table with a colleague of mine from Mexico, and X decided to ask him about Y tu mama tambien - the only mexican critically acclaimed movie we have watched. He quickly dismissed the fact that the movie had a parallel story and told us "Its funny. Movies that are unpopular amongst the local audience have an international appeal." He definitely had a point with the one sample we offered him, though it doesn't apply to a lot of other movies.

If my post has inspired you in any way to join the Club of Classy Cinema Watchers - here is something for your reference - The Best 1000 Movies ever made.