To Love or to Like?

re: movie Jogger`s park
Saw the movie tonight. I never thought i would ever write this, but i agree with what F.V is saying about this movie in post # 8. The movie is pretentious, does not sound real. Either that or i am so much out of touch with the India of today that i do not know what i am saying.

I do not believe that even today in India girls (even in Bombay or Delhi parks) would strike a conversation with strangers. So, a big deal was made about this lawyer`s celebrity status and the girl being in awe of him. The girl is shown as being very westernised, independent, has had many relationships and seems to have many admirers. Why do i think the theme is lifted straight out of Hollywood?
Bollywood films are trying to be hip. So, you now-a-days hear 4-lettered ``f...`` words being uttered with impunity (i counted at least 8 times such words were used in the movie). And, we are to admire this new change! I prefere the old time conservative values, with a good story and some good songs.
The whole film is a ``time pass`` that is all. There is no creativity nor any reality. I think some B-grade bollywood movies are better.
sridhar

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Ras Saheb:
Shatranj ke khilari, though the only hindi/urdu film made by Ray, is by no means his best film. I dont know if I would even call it the best hindi film. The top contenders would include `Saheb Bibi Ghulam`, Bandini and Do Bigha Zamin.

t

Satyajit Ray’s first Urdu/Hindi film Shatranj Ke Khilari

is one of my all time favorites from South Asian cinema.

Ras

Saminasha #38,
I will answer you before Veeresh gets chance ..) He is very active these days.

Intercaste marriage is quite common. I think that inter-class marriage (if you mean marraige between people from different social/financial standing) is not that common.

My relatives include Kayasthas, Sikhs and now - a christian. One of my class mate, a muslim girl, had a live-in relationship with a Bengali brahmin for 4 years IN BIHAR before they decided to get married and move to USA. No one in city was much bothered. Of course, it was Jamshedpur - a city with very high education rate.

Veeresh,

That is indeed a population that is interesting.

How common is marriage across class/caste in India?

Saminasha ji . . . I am talking about the rather standard phenomenon in our part of the world of a 10-12 year gap between husband and wife especially in arranged marriages . . . where it starts with a 28-30 year old male ``settled`` getting married to somebody who is say 18-20, this is not uncommon, right?

Now fast forward to when the woman is about 40, the children have started growing wings, and the husband is in the `50s, losing interest, facing retirement and job blues and most of all, not as energetic as a woman in her `40s reaching a simple sexual peak is concerned.

+++

Across social and all other barriers, classes.

Veeresh,

Some good points. Older men are attractive to younger women because they tend to be maturer, have had more life experiences and acrued more power/prestige/skill in their fields. They also are not intimidated by the younger woman`s intelligence-they actually are quite supportive of them-which is a far cry from the way the men our age act; Jogger`s Park illustrated that well with Jenny`s guy friends who really deserved the slaps they got. Some of the older male profs at my uni are considered very attractive by grad students, etc. But you also get women profs who have their groupies. Mostly its pretty harmless student adoration. On a few occasions you`ll have an older male prof marry a grad student.
And to be honest, if the male prof. has left a devoted wife of twenty-thirty years of marriage, some of us feel bad for the ex spouse.

My take, having been a young person once upon a time, is that it is the younger person who desires the elder person more . . . and finds in the elder person of the opposite gender all the missing bits and pieces that remain mysteries otherwise in the opposite sex of the same young age?

Another point - for young men, middle aged men, elderly men - the fascination with women in their 40s seems to be a static point? Does this happen to other men too?

HN, Ferz:

...ok!...it must be the water or the air in your neck of woods...if there is a trace of sex in the relationship it cannot be platonic...jean-paul, HN and ferz aside!

...re: desi lolitas

...if you mean in literature...i would agree...

...in real life they abound and come out of every corner...in your area they are called rakhails...across the divide they are sanctioned by misinterpreted religion and shariah and are are the latest or the fourth wife...

...and again to mildly protest.... HN it does not take any character to sin...last i checked one needs either (misused) power, money or both...and there is no dearth of them on either side...

samm

...agree...they should do something about the bimbos...and first lines;)

...t

Also, having seen Leela, I wonder why the younger lover/desire object is almost incoherent and unintelligent. I found the young man in Leela to be childlike and unripe...and what was Jenny`s first line about a painting she and Jyotin were looking at? ``It speaks of music and poetry.`` What? What does that mean???

My suggestion for screenwriters approaching this October-June or Winter-Spring combination is to take special pains to make the younger partner compelling and not just reeking of youth. There is that famous line about desire happening in the mind, or that humans are mainly attracted by each other`s intelligence...

Farzana,

Hah! I thought about it myself, once the typo was already nailed on the grammarian`s board!

But, what you say is so happy a thought...reminds me of a favourite line...And then there is a happiness the heart grows afraid...or something akin to that...now that line would be the diagnosis of all those on the verge of the pull of t`s cg/cg relationships isn`t it. It takes a lot of character to sin...ahh another delectable word isn`t it?

But isn`t it exciting these ideas, their relevance, and then their sometimes dramatic eaths. Another favourite quote...make it two...are from Ibsen.

`` The majority is always wrong.``

the second is another delectable one;

``The life of an idea is 15 years, at the most 17.``

I would love it if a Lolita were to happen from our part of the earth!

Am doing fine...otherwise...

HN

T-Bhai,

My mother and I watched it together. It is an interesting movie, with device gestures that could be even more effective if some of the genre conventions (thunderclaps=conflict; music editing and dialogue) were more strictly edited.

Victor Banerjee played Jyotin Chatterjee well enough that the judge was a very sympathetic character. Banerjee`s reserve and restraint elevated Chatterjee`s personal crisis to something almost elegiac-as much as is possible in Bollywood genre. Also, his conveyance of his ``falling``, his cover ups, repetitions of dutiful lines (as in the family powwow convene to decide his son`s affair), his relief after signing the property papers and sharing his wife`s kheer in celebration of their anniversary-expresses his ambivalence almost effortlessly. (which we know is hard work)

I really appreciated this duality whenever Chatterji went back to join his family at breakfast or dinner. On one level the viewer appreciates this tidy and devoted family unit-where everyone knows and performs their roles. Underneath this surface, the family was almost monstrous in its expectations-and Chatterji was as imprisoned in them as each member (besides his son`s affair, and his wife`s irritation at her domestic scheme being intruded on by her retired husband), you really got the feeling that everyone adhered to a code of ``honor`` and unregulated ``love`` was disruptive/negligable when compared to that code. I really felt bad for Chatterji- he did all the right things and gave up new possibilities to maintain the family structure and reputation. In a way, it is tragic.

Jenny got more interesting as the movie developed. I dont know what was so compelling about her conversation...but her circumstances were noteworthy; without family, roots, a settled discipline. She seemed to be doing whatever she could given her genetic lottery and employment circumstances. I agree with Farzana in that it would have been nice to see her actually do some work rather than signifying work in her hotel suit. Her lines were kind of awful, but I think another actress might have given her some more gravity?

Also, I was a bit surprised that neither JC nor Jenny seemed to give one guilty thought to JC`s wife...who did seem more like a mother to JC than anything.

veeresh:
I do not have the Leela album but I do recall some good songs in it, especially the one sung by the Vinod Khanna character. In Leela, I saw Deepti Naval getting upset about an older woman having an affair with her son. Interestingly, the next film I saw, whose name I can`t recall, had Deepti Naval playing an older widow living in a modern Apartment complex and having an affair with a young boy who was her paying guest. She played both roles quite well. Looks like older woman, younger boy theme is in vogue in Indian movies. Do they show Sex and the City over there?

HN.t...
How delectable it would be if Sartre`s quote had indeed been, ``platonic relationship between man and woman is possible, because sex comes in between them``! See the paradigm shift, of rising above the basic instinct by making that instinct into a springboard rather than a cul de sac...we can then talk about lovers as friends and friends as lovers without the baggage of institutionalised longing...

But, alas, these are mere Freudian whimsies of keyboards ``too stiffened by platonicity... ``;)

And, so how are we, HN???