Tag: rangeela

Spirit of Rangeela

The bad news is that Rangeela songs are not available on Spotify (my music streaming app of choice). The good news is that instead I turn to Youtube to watch them, and get the “full experience” instead.

It’s 25 years since Rangeela released, and Mint has done a feature on “25 reasons to love Rangeela“. Here are my own thoughts on why I loved the movie and why it had such a big influence on my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL8kz8t7pmg

I remember the date when I watched Rangeela. 25th October 1995. It was the last day of an epic long weekend caused due to Diwali and a total solar eclipse. Two of my cousins were visiting us, and the previous day, after the eclipse had passed, we had gone to watch The Mask (along with my dad). On the 25th, we went to watch Rangeela.

I watched Rangeela in the theatre only once (sadly, in hindsight), and watched it sitting next to my dad (and cousins). I was nearly 13 years old. We had gone to Urvashi, which was then (and maybe even now) one of Bangalore’s biggest cinema halls. Urvashi had recently undergone a makeover, getting a Dolby stereo system in the process. And I had never listened to Rahman’s music before.

I remember it being a insane experience. It was so insane (in a positive way) that even today, 25 years later, listening to the songs rekindled the memory of sitting in Urvashi, and imagining Rahman’s sounds hitting my ears from all directions. And to combine that with the awesome visuals – remember that I had just hit puberty and this was one of my first movies after that event (The Mask, obviously, being another).

Watching the videos on Youtube now, I still think Urmila Matondkar looks stunning in the movie. Even otherwise, the cinematography is first grade, and the visuals are stunning. I can only imagine how the 12-year-old me might have felt looking at all that on a big screen back then (with my father sitting right next to me).

I have written here earlier about how the teens are possibly the optimal years of movie appreciation.  And it was influential for sure. For the next couple of years, Spirit of Rangeela was a fixture for choreography shows at inter-school cul-fests. Some of us little teenagers who assumed we were jilted in love sang (or whistled) Kya Kahe Kya Na Kahe. Tanha Tanha, of course, was yet another level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG0yT7nweq8

Sometimes I wonder, if the movie would have had the same effect on me had I not watched it on a really large screen, in a theatre with awesome audio. Maybe Rahman’s Hindi debut deserved that.

My apologies if this post appears scattered. I’ve been listening to (and watching) the songs of Rangeela on loop for the last two hours, and it has triggered all sorts of thoughts in me. And there have been too many things to write here.

Maybe I should’ve done a tweetstorm instead.

 

 

The Optimal Age of Movie Appreciation

My wife tells me that it’s a “family tradition” in her family to watch Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (K3G) whenever it is playing on TV. I’ve always found it (both the movie and that it’s her family tradition to watch it so many times) absurd. However, a conversation from earlier this morning makes me appreciate why her family appreciates the movie so much. It has to do with the “optimal age of movie appreciation”.

This morning, I was talking to RSJ.   Let me just say that he’s named after two fascinating movie characters, both played by Aamir Khan.

While I have watched both movies (at home, on VHS tapes, soon after they were  released), I don’t remember much of either movie, at least not enough to know the full names of the lead characters. My defence is that I was way too young when I first watched these movies, and too old when I rewatched them, to find them influential.

This brings us to the “optimal age of movie appreciation”, which I define as between 13 and 16 (give or take a year or two either side). At this age range, you are old enough to fully appreciate the movie and get involved in the story, and also young enough that you can get interested or obsessed about just about anything.

You don’t remember much of movies that you’ve watched before you were 12-13. And once you are past 16, and headed to college, you start making fun of the absurd bits in movies. Actually the optimal age of movie appreciation ends when you start watching movies with groups of people your own age -in such an environment, there is positive feedback to any fun you make of the movie, and you are encouraged on the margin to not buy into the movies.

So, in that sense, my golden age of movie appreciation lasted from Rangeela (1995) to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (late 1998). That was the period in life when I both understood and got totally involved in the movies I was watching. And I could watch just about anything.

KKHH was the end of this, as I clearly remember us talking in school (I was in class 11) making fun of the concept of the movie. And then movie watching was never the same again (it didn’t help that a lot of my movie watching during undergrad years was at the Open Air Theatre in IIT Madras, where movies were accompanied by constant chatter of people making fun of them. We only made an exception for Life Is Beautiful). Now I’ve gone to the other extreme where I hardly watch movies.

Not everyone swings the other way as much as I do (for example, both my wife and RSJ remain movie fanatics), but once you are past 16, you can never get influenced by movies in the way that you did before.

RSJ is a few years older than me, so he was in this “golden age” when Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar came out. My wife is a few years younger than me, so she was in this golden age when K3G came out (her sister was 11 at the time, but I guess that is borderline for this purpose). She doesn’t, for example, get what the big fuss about Rangeela is (as an aside, I think it helped immensely that I watched Rangeela at the massive Urvashi Theatre which had then newly gotten a Dolby Sound System).

What do you think your most influential movies were, and at what age did you watch them? Do you think this 13-16 age band makes sense?