There’s a lesson in re-watching old cinema

There are those with a home, gadgets, a stable Internet connection and subscriptions to OTT platforms (or friends who have accounts on them).
There’s a lesson in re-watching old cinema

CHENNAI : There are those with a home, gadgets, a stable Internet connection and subscriptions to OTT platforms (or friends who have accounts on them). It would be safe to say that most of them have a watch-list and are likely to be using this time to catch-up on shows or are racing to view the umpteen new releases. I, on the contrary, have been on a rewatching binge, and unlike a few Facebook friends that are revisiting the classics, I depend on preprogrammed content on regional TV channels. This leaves me with little choice (which I’m grateful for) and lots of time (which I have plenty of) to think about them. “But we overlay the present onto the past.

We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered,” goes a quote from Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House. In a sense, this is what I have done to the movies I’ve seen over the past few weeks — some that I have watched more than once, some I’d forgotten even existed, some I’d decided were not worth my time since I began to see cinema with a gendered lens.

Overlaying the person that I am now to older films did not leave me disappointed; in fact I made a number of interesting discoveries — be it lessons to learn from, mistakes not to be repeated, things we overlooked, or things we just didn’t know of back then. At a theatre in Ooty, on a family holiday when I was six, I didn’t see Sundar C’s Ullaithai Allitha. I stayed crying outside the theatre throughout the runtime while my father and uncle saw one half of the film each. This story has been remembered by the family every time the film comes on, adding to the laugh riot that the movie is.

I must’ve seen it now for the hundredth time and laughed just as hard, but I cannot un-see the heroine being coerced into love, the stalking, or the sexual harassment at the workplace. The saving grace is at least that the heroine is no damsel in distress and managed to knock a few punches in the climax scene. At ten, I didn’t understand ‘the feel’ of Alaipayuthey; by fifteen, I had decided that my marriage would be inspired by the movie, and now, twenty years after the film first came out, I can say without doubt that Karthik is a lousy husband, and the September Maadham soundtrack falls squarely in the bar-themed-bashing category. In the largely forgettable Yaaradi Nee Mohini, the man asks the woman to smile i.e perform her femininity right. It’s meant to be a joke, but trust me, it’s Sexism 101. Watching this Nayanthara starrer made me realise how far we’ve come in Tamil cinema, but I also wondered if the only way to entirely stop heroines from drinking alcohol ‘by mistake’ is if the TASMACs don’t reopen.

The big mistake though was to never account for the women who found their sexuality because of Maggie alias Maragadhavalli from the ever popular Panchathanthiram. Interestingly, Maggie, and Thilothama played unapologetically by Monal in Charlie Chaplin, and Paapu played by Malavika in Vassol Raja MBBS are never subject to ridicule or moral lessons — and all this before Sneha played a sex worker in Puduppettai. The record-breaking Suyamvaram has many a love-across-class lines, and Kovil, very similar to Bharathiraja’s Alaigal Oivathillai, portrays love across community lines: they all have happy-endings. Love that is requited and requires no one to die if seen on-screen would be deemed unreal now at a time when honour killings are rampant.

An underrated movie on love is Yai! Nee Romba Azhaga Irukke! that portrays love of three kinds: obsessive resulting in self-harm, narcissistic ending in hate, and one that professes and waits to the point of letting go without pressurising the other person into loving. ‘Family, Marriage, Love’ is how I might have earlier described Mani Ratnam’s Anjali. After crying once more at the climax I’d say it’s a coming-of-age film, one that touches on childhood, difference, inclusion, acceptance and loss. For an industry fuelled by bodyshaming Perazhagan is special for doing away with pity and focusing on love beyond looks. Black-and-white cinema still holds lessons for us on uncomfortable conversations. Sarada deals with impotence five decades before we had Kalyana Samayal Saadham discuss erectile dysfunction.

Seeing Nagesh in Server Sundaram talking to his friend Raghavan about his insecurities is surely a scene between male actors still waiting to be written that sensitively. The truth is, I have watched way more movies than the one discussed above. While some made me feel like my childhood has been scarred, some gave me threads to hold onto. I have learnt something too, valuable enough to justify the number of hours spent in front of the TV: The pandemic has merged the reel and real worlds into one large dystopian setting, and we need a radically altered past, or at least a re-reading of it as we step into a new normal in the near future. Stay home, Stay safe, and even if you stay in front of the TV, you can still be wise.

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