The Chronicles of a Happy Life

Watched it on the big screen at IMAX, quite a few days ago. I was a little disappointed with the first few minutes as I had expected something more of a visual spectacle from a project which the Wachowski brothers (of Matrix fame) were associated with. On the other hand, the IMAX theatre is a very good one, I was watching this movie with good friends, the one next to me had a big cone of popcorn which he willingly shared and most significantly, I wasn't spending a paisa (thanks to Meta, Bhaggo and Ghanna for the treat). So a little while into the movie, I was pretty satisfied with life in general (though not so much with what was going on, on the screen).

Then, the fundas started. The movie that had begun to resemble a Mithun-da-fillum with extra special effects (the hero armed with nothing but knives and karate stunts takes out a groups of people armed with machine guns), quickly started becoming deep. It was about 911. It was about the religious intolerance, especially against Muslims, prevalent today in Europe. It was about George W. Bush. I realized that the movie could actually be about justifying terrorism. The man behind the mask could've been Osama Bin Laden or even Bhagat Singh. And, I definitely got the feeling that I was supposed to to root for the terrorist instead of the brave detectives who were trying to save people's lives.

The story was not very interesting - the plot wasn't fleshy enough to justify the full year it was supposed to stretch over. Natalie Portman's role was completely insignificant. They shaved her head! (I don't know why the Wachowski brothers do that to women in their movies, remember Trinity?). The movie ended very predictably too - with big bomb blasts and that slight ambiguity (who was the protoganist really? and did he really die?) which is necessary if the director is smart and greedy enough to plan for a sequel or more.

So overall this was a just OK movie. Sometimes, I think that nothing in this world is absolutely right or absolutely wrong - everything is right or wrong relative to somebody, Generally, we mistake rightness only relative to society (approximately the legal system) and/or stuff that we were told as children (approximately the religious and cultural belief system) and I like to think that this movie expressed this. But blowing up the parliament as a victorious ending and expecting the audience to applaud is just too much. no?

Some dialogues were pretty cool. You can check them out here. Btw, IMDB has given it a 8+ rating so apparently the movie people do know more about their business than I do.

There is no sadness
And there is no happiness
There is no pain
And there is no gain

Questions go round in my head
About whether life is dead
Should life be lived like a melody?
Or more like a game of monopoly?

This is not about the farewell
Or a computer engineer deaths knell.
It’s not even about better brands
Or about friends leaving to foreign sands

It’s partly about realizing that I’m a drama queen
(I don’t know for a guy what word that would mean)
It’s just so much more fun when stuff is happening
Even when the stuff is scary and frightening

Long ago, in Jeevan Vidya I learnt
(Completely useless it wasn’t)
That the best life is one with nothing amiss
But is this really bliss?

1) Went on a fundoo batch trip. Thanks to Pranav, Rama (no, I don’t blame you for all those delays), Ravishankar and others for organizing this.

2) Gave a party to some juniors.

3) Got a party from juniors – Alankar (I don’t call him any other name :|), Grawl, Mangla, Jaiswal, Maachis – thank you for showing that Escape could be recreated in IIIT(just realized that you could probably ask your juniors to have music when your time comes to make it even better)

4) The official farewell function got over a few days ago.

5) Got in touch with quite a few friends through orkut.

6) Wrote testimonials for a lot of people in the yearbook that Shiben put up. Writing stuff about somebody can be either very hard or very easy and this is sometimes irrespective of whether you hang out with that person a lot or not. If there is one piece of uncertain advice that I can give my juniors, it would be that you better start filling the yearbook way ahead of time.

7) A lot of people wrote testimonials for me and I was like - ‘Awwww’ - with a stupid goofy smile when I read each and every one of them. Oh! The pure bliss of narcissism :D

8) Was coerced into agreeing that Neal and Nikki is a bad movie. My defense that it was a sweet story about a girl who’s a control freak and that it showed how the ‘greater independence’ and ‘liberal mindset’ of modern times was actually making things more difficult instead of easier was brutally hushed :(. ;)

9) After watching this, I’m having second thoughts about my dream career ;)

10) Finished a century of blog posts.

P.S. Khurana, thanks for the links :D