As has happened before, I started to watch a movie while procrastinating to write an essay, an essay on Confucius who, the Wikipedia says, was a teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher in China. The essay is on his Doctrine of Mean and various aspects of it. Let’s say I am not much enthusiastic about writing any essay on any doctrine. So, as is habit, I have been procrastinating. The idea to watch a movie was definitely a result of procrastination, but I forget why I chose that particular movie. The movie in question is ‘Kites’, a Bollywood movie starring the very muscular Hrithik Roshan and an Uruguayan-Mexican actress Barbara Mori.
First things first, call my thoughts lacking in depth and imagination, but I couldn’t figure out why the film was called “Kites”. Incomplete, restless, fast-forwarding viewing of the movie might have resulted in me missing a phrase here or there which might have fleetingly indicated the literal or metaphorical importance of a kite in the movie. But even so, in my humble opinion, the idea of the name of a movie is to, in some or other way, give you what is the significance of the movie. Maybe if I spend some more time thinking about it, it would all make sense.
Having reproached the title of the movie, I’d move on to make the content of this post significant to the title, or vice versa, at least to an extent, as you will see. I wouldn’t call this post a review but I must say that I did not enjoy the movie even a bit; I watched it only because, as I mentioned above, I was procrastinating and there are no limits and quality to what I do when I procrastinate. Despite the grueling minutes of watching the larger part of the movie, I did watch the last five minutes (or so) very intently, because it was the ending. I want to note two observation made in those minutes, which you may come to think as completely shallow and which might make you regret having wasted your minutes reading this post. First, the scene is on this magnificent cliff overlooking the ocean and Hrithik Roshan is right at the edge of the cliff and he is wailing (because… [insert spoiler]). The wail, I must say, was a pretty good performance, quite believable (this is after having squirmed at other parts of the movie watching him act). So there he is on the edge, the wind ruffling his ruffled hair, looking rugged with the beard and a tan, and he is in these rugged clothes, and he wails… with his lips parched grey… there is the music, so you can’t hear him wail, but his face is scrunched, he looks like he is in immense pain and as he falls knees first to the ground he wails. Clap, clap clap.
Then there is this bit when the heroine is texting. I won’t tell you why she is texting when the hero is wailing. But I will tell you that she is in a situation where she has to type the SMS PRONTO! And… what does she do…? She uses an ellipsis!! Okay, I don’t know about you, but ellipses are the last punctuation I would think of when in a hurry (I don’t use ellipses too often. Of course they have been inserted often in this post… for reasons). What lack of common-sense…
That’s all.
Stew With A Dash Of Bamboo 