Don’t care for most new films but great dialogues in the classics get me going
Iused to love going to the movies. Now it is like planning an expedition. Climbing Everest would be easier. I have become so accustomed to the six-inch iPad or the smaller mobile phone that the huge screen and the 24-speaker sound system leave me exhausted. Add to that folks who saunter in late in groups like they are doing you a favour, stamp on your toes, giggling and yakking. Behind you, the crunch munch of crispy food, and you wonder why you spent so much money to torture yourself.
As such, I have reduced my viewing to a certain genre. Black Panther will have to leap about without my patronage as will all sci-fi movies. And so will The Shape of Water and anything that is supernatural or has a hunk of horror in it. No reason to pay to be scared, the monthly bills are enough to inspire fear.
As for the Oscars, ever since I failed to understand Dances with Wolves — and it won the statue — I have come to the conclusion that these awards are given to films that sideline people like me and make us the exception. They are specifically shot to make us look bad.
The Hurt Locker left me wounded to the core and I had to use superglue to stay in my seat.
Birdman just did not fly and started with a broken wing…what on earth was it about. I remember The Artist and not knowing what was unfolding on the screen. And the worst thing about these films — including The English Patient and Braveheart — is that everyone else around you gets all intellectual and profound, and they tell you that you failed to grasp the nuances. Oh really, nuances! I went to see a movie, okay? If I wanted to grasp nuances I would have gone to a rendition of Beethoven.
I remember watching Moonlight and it was so boring I slept through it. The subject was laudable but the movie dragged like it had a ton of rocks attached to it. After which I had to suffer these pseudo-nouveau types yapping on about sensitivity and the storyline and the pathos and the threading of the narrative and I almost wished for the sunlight to blind them all.
So back to what I love: movies with dialogue. Something that you can recall with delight long after you have left the hall. Like some of these:
The Darkest Hour: Lord Halifax on the famous speech: Winston just ‘mobilised’ the English language and sent it into battle. Anne of the Thousand Days to Henry II: Your music is sour, your poetry worse, you make love like you eat, with a lot of noise and little finesse.
Lawrence of Arabia: Walk away Dryden, walk away, you have spent your life walking away.
Cleopatra to Mark Anthony: You will kneel to the Queen of the Nile: I asked it of Caesar, I demand it of you. The Guns of Navarone: The party is over, someone sat on the cake.
My Fair Lady: Look at her, a prisoner of the gutters, damned by every syllable she utters, by rights she should be taken out and hung for the cold blooded murder of the English tongue.
Then there are memorable quotes that put the film on the hall of fame.
Love Story: Love means never having to say you are sorry. Dirty Harry: Go ahead, make my day. Dead Poets Society: Carpe Diem. Seize the day, boys. Star Wars: May the force be with you. The best gangster lines were in The Godfather series. “I’ll make him an offer he cannot refuse…” how’s that for deadly intent? Then the cruelly chilled charm of Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver: You talkin’ to me? Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street: “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bulls**t story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.”
If I had to choose a genre besides historicals and musicals, I’d say themes on journalism strike my fancy. While I wasn’t blown over by The Post, it being rather superficial, this love affair began with All the
President’s Men. Now, that was a great film. Spotlight was another riveting effort and made any member of the fourth estate feel, okay, we can make a difference. Did you see
The Insider and feel the agony of being let down as a reporter when you fight the good fight? Got through to me, that one did. As did Russel Crowe’s performance in State of
Play. Politics versus the Press, that has always been a winner since the days of Citizen
Kane. The dogged reporter, the supportive editor, the worried management, the political skullduggery, the arm twist, the pressure, it does happen and good does not always triumph over evil…it gets spiked.
Even in adverse light films do focus on the ills of our business. Shattered Glass, a saga about a rising star who fabricated half his story stresses a new dimension in reportage: fake news and how it becomes increasingly acceptable.
In Zodiac, roles are reversed and reporters turn into cops hunting down a killer.
If you work on even the fringes of media you must see the film adaptation of the Frost/ Nixon interview. Utterly stunning insight.
Nightcrawler was another spooky film about how the citizen reporter is now a fact and has a role to play in giving news. TV news channels are full of them, especially in India.
In 2014, the movie Kill The Messenger underscored what it is to be a moth that gets too close to the bulb. Absence of Malice had the same theme. That the powerful can be ruthless and easily destroy a career.