03.06
Shanthala and I watched High Fidelity Wednesday night. Again. We had watched the movie a few years back in the theaters, when it was first released. I had loved the movie and Shanthala had found it passable. I couldn’t understand her reaction. We had cuddled up to the same romantic movies so far and yet here we were, disagreeing about this one, one that I considered pretty high on my all time favorite movie list. She didn’t offer any reasons for her dislike.
A unique blend of music and falling in love, the movie had me from the very first lines:
“What came first ? The music or the misery ? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. Did I listen to music because I was miserable ? Or was I miserable because I listened to music ?“
On Wednesday, Shanthala wanted to watch the movie again. She was reading the book by Nick Hornby that the movie was based on and said that she could now understand my crush on the movie. And finally last night, the movie stole her heart too.
Inspired by the top 5 lists constantly conjured up by the character played by John Cusack, I asked Shanthala to name her top five romantic movies. Her list, one short, (she was never good at making top 5 lists, while I wallowed in them like the main character) in no particular order :
Rangeela
Say Anything
Forget Paris
Notting Hill
Except for Forget Paris, alas, we didn’t share a common movie. My list, not ordered either :
Before Sunrise
Before Sunset
High Fidelity
Forget Paris
Brief Encounter
with consolation prize awarded to Annie Hall.
I like to attribute the lack of commonality in our lists to her rather short memory about such topics and her difficulty in constructing such lists. But I do spy a logic in her selection: her selections are all upbeat movies. And I tend to like movies that capture the essence of a romance well, that showed what the attraction was about besides physical attraction, that take time to show the relationship develop, little by little, till the romance seems but a logical outcome. They may not be upbeat, but they’re somewhat more realistic. For example, I enjoyed Rangeela and Notting Hill, but they were too fantastical for my taste.
The contenders to my top five list, the ones that didn’t make it, but made a lasting impression are: Say Anything, The End of the Affair, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Bridges of Madison County, Lost in Translation, When Harry Met Sally, Nelly and Monseiur Arnaud, Scenes from a Marriage, many of Woody Allen’s and the Kannada movie, America, America.
A word must be said here about Casablanca. While we adore the movie, we both felt that a movie that celebrates the hero letting go of the heroine didn’t deserve to make the cut (and would Casablanca be Casablanca if Ilsa had stayed behind with Rick)? Shanthala and I didn’t want to just have Paris.
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