Cinema, Spanning Time and Space
Allen Garland
It’s a hot winter day on the streets of Jaipur, India. I find myself with a group of others walking the streets observing my surroundings. The streets are dirty; they are cluttered with small shops, each of which is managed by a shopkeeper who wants nothing more than to be your best friend. However the most difficult thing to observe and absorb is the poverty. Almost everywhere there are destitute people in need of help who will never see the type of comfort that many of us enjoy. India is a desperately poor, developing country. However when we took two rights and a left, and asked for directions once or twice, we came to a place where, like the local people who have also found their ways there, anyone can find beauty and a sense of dreamy hope. This is a place where we all go to watch people in brightly colored clothing and in beautiful scenery, sing songs and develop a charming plot. A movie theatre.
When our small group of American college students set out that day to find a theatre to experience Bollywood cinema, we went to see and experience the types of movies that Indians enjoy and maybe to get a feeling for why cinema is as popular in India as it is in the U.S. However, promptly after stepping through the heavy wooden doors into the theatre lounge, and thanks to Rick Hyde’s, “History of The Movies” class, I realize that modern American cinema is not at all comparable to US movies. Instead I find myself in a setting that before this excursion I had only been able to imagine through class. I have entered the Indian version of 1940’s Hollywood.
Walking through the cinema doors we were immediately greeted by the definition of classy theatre. There was a dining area to the left with tables around a lounge with soft lamp light that spread around the room. This was accompanied by a blue mood lighting emitted by beautiful chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and light coming through multi-colored stained glass panes in the theatre windows and doors. Even the snack bar looked classier than the average American popcorn stand. After buying various drinks and snacks, we made our way to the entrance of the theatre auditorium that was playing our intended film, Three Idiots, a title that reminded me of the American movie Dumb and Dumber. We were greeted by a valet with a flashlight who guided us to our seats in the comparatively large theatre.
The movie started, and we were surprised to find how much of the movie we could understand from the plot even though it was in Hindi. It seemed to be a rather entertaining movie. This second point was evident in the reaction from the Indians in the theatre with us that I would never expect from an American movie theatre--audience members were clapping. It was great to see people enjoying a film so much and expressing it in that way without the sound of ssshhh from other audience members.
The movie was about the lives of a group of 3 college students enrolled in an Indian university. It was full of beauty, romance, color, dancing and singing. In short it was a world that our group had seen in India did not exist. Why would these people be so enthusiastic seeing such a misrepresented picture of their country? This was the main point that really hit me as a comparison to 1940’s Hollywood. These people were not here to see the type of streets that they lived in or the poverty. They were there, like the lower and middle class Americans during the Depression, to get away from all of the poverty and sadness in their lives. They were going to see the Indian version of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film.
They wanted to see people living in the type of wealth, class and carefree lifestyle that they could only dream of. The idea of higher education, beautiful clothing, and romantic encounters with beautiful men or women illustrated through dance. The brightly colored and sparkling clothes the two main characters wore together in the musical love scene were reminiscent of Fred Astaire’s flawless tuxedo and Ginger Roger’s infamous feather dress. This experience was more than just your regular day out for both the local people and myself. It was more than just a movie. It was uplifting.
When we departed from the theatre and stepped back onto the hot Indian streets again, I could feel what I can only assume everyone leaving that movie felt as well. It was as if the day had gotten a little brighter from the experience. Even though the movie was in Hindi and we couldn’t understand the words, we could understand the plot. The musical scenes, like Fred and Ginger’s famous integrated musicals, transcended the language barrier. This experience, coupled with what I had learned in class back in Hiram, Ohio, created my first real connection between home and a place half way around the world that had seemed so incredibly foreign.