The ending matters

The three movies which I happened to watch during my little trip home were Bhoot, Sansar and Joggers' Park. It is the endings of Sansar and Joggers' Park that have caught my attention.

Sansar was an old, I guess 80's, movie staring Raj Babber, Rekha and Anupam Kher. A simple story about a family, the internal strife, a father who has given his everything in bringing up his children, an ungrateful son, an exemplary bahu/bhabhi/bibi and the resulting bantwara in the family. Lots of drama, high flying dialogues and nothing out of ordinary till the last scene. In the last scene, as expected, Raj Babber was feeling the pangs of guilt for his deeds and Anupam Kher was feeling the pangs of love for his grand child and the family was ready for a reunion. But this time there was a twist in the tail. When everything was going fine, Rekha objects to the reunion and takes the stand that what has happened can't be undone and it is better for the family that they live separately meeting only on Sundays, the argument being that living apart and being at good terms was more important than living together (which ppl mostly do out of a sense of duty) and not having respect and love for each other. The stand made a lot of sense and made the movie a rather thought provoking one.

The Joggers' Park, on the contrary flunked right in the end. It is a critically acclaimed movie and one which I was waiting to see since long. The movie goes along well, obviously weighed down by the expectations that I already had, but it was the end that disappointed me. I felt that it was too dramatic. Ofcourse we all knew what is going to happen but the way it happened (all the lightening behind jc's daughter when she is speaking, the sudden emergence of the photograph even though the photography incident seemed to have ended with the breaking of camera), it looked quite out of place with the rhythm of the movie. Seems like the director suddenly ran out of ideas and decided to call it a day.

For an excellent take on the writing of movie scripts, I would recommend "Adaptation" the movie. It is an adaptation of a book called "The orchid thief". It is the story of the struggle of the writer as he is trying to adapt the said book to a movie. So the movie tells the story of its own writing and also manages to tell the story in the original book. Confusing? Well yeah, u may have to watch it few times to actually understand it fully but it is worth the effort. The main point of the movie is that the author doesn't want to create a story in which ppl change in order to make a story. He wants a story in which the characters stay as they are. Does he succeed? For that watch the movie. Written by none other than Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman :) and starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper.

Comments

Jaya said…
Rightly pointed out the unconventional ending of Sansar. I remember seeign the movie too. But I don't think it was much of a success in its time, was it? Possibly too much for an average Indian viewer, who is still happy with 'K's. :-)
Ravi Handa said…
Did ya kno that both Charlie and David were nominated for the OSCAR ;) but the authorities had promised only one statue in case THEY won..... For those who havent seen the movie, the above statement is supposedly humorous

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