Watching great movies

It was another lazy December afternoon. I was relaxing at home - I had finished reading The Scarlet Pimpernel and come to the half way mark of Beyond A Boundary. Not to mention somewhere in the middle of Peskin and Schroeder. Idly looking for some distraction, I browsed my hard drive (That sounds strange, but that's the way it is) - I chanced upon the 1956 heist movie Bob le flambeur, which I had downloaded a month back, but forgotten in the whirl that is the end of a semester. I always feel hungry when I see people eat in films, so I kept some snacks handy as a precaution. I settled down in my chair and started watching the movie.

An hour and a half later it was rudely interrupted by the persistent ring of the phone. When I answered the call, my mother on the other end of the line asked me why I was so preoccupied with some thoughts - sad even.

Every once in a while, a movie has this effect on me. It has nothing to do with tragedy. You could describe it as a tightening of the gut, a dull feeling stuck in the pit of your throat - at the back of your mind, you try to figure out a label to put on it, but you can't put a finger on it. The part of your head chafing at the loudspeakers blaring devotional music, the part of your head thinking about the upload deadline three days away - they all suddenly seem short circuited. The world consists only of what is happening in the movie and your gut. When you are rudely reminded of the existence of the rest of the world, you stumble about to find your bearings - like I did while answering the phone. For want of a better adjective, I should put the title "great" on these movies.

Most recently I had this experience with passages of the Inglourious Basterds, during the crime scene of Rififi, while watching the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West (an old favourite), the end of Cool Hand Luke. It happens more frequently than I would have expected, but there is a massive selection bias operating here. For example, I never get this feeling during romantic comedies or animation flicks, partly because of the my personal biases I guess.

Some Spoilers ahead-
There is always a build up to these scenes. Sometimes the whole movie was just meant to lead toward these moments of release.

This is very prominent in Rififi - the careful planning leading to the crime, the atmosphere of the Cafe in which the characters move around - these can get you fidgeting if they were not building towards the crime. This 30 minute silent scene catches and holds you as I described. The rest of the movie documenting the unraveling is like a long release of pressure - fascinating in its own right, but coming so soon after the "great" scene means that it will have lesser claims upon you.

In Bob le Flambeur, the scene comes near the end - most of the movie sets up the character of Bob and develops and uses the characters of Paolo, Anne, Yvonne and everyone else to drive us towards the conclusion. The description and planning of the crime itself is pedestrian and sketchy when compared to the care which Rififi lavishes upon it. This alone gives a clue that maybe the execution of the heist is not the central point of the movie. But I was not prepared for the ironic twist at the end - all of Bob's character which was stealthily developed in the early part turns out to be the key on which the twist turns. Truly a great movie.

I can go on forever detailing such cases, but something different is my experience with Quentin Tarantino. I had a vague loathing for his fare in the beginning because I heard severed hands and decapitated heads spewed blood like water faucets in his films. I always had a queasy feeling about excessive violence - a LOT of people recommended his movies to me, but I always avoided watching them.

One day I finally sat down and watched Reservoir Dogs. It was nothing like I had imagined it would be. I found that he had a rare gift - he could produce those moments which I said defined "great" cinema (for me) WITHOUT any character development or buildup. It was curious how he managed to do this in opening scenes, climaxes, anywhere.. - and build his movies around them instead of making them a goal. A great example is the opening sequence or the scene where he introduces the protagonists of Inglourious Basterds - it is astonishing how he can produce the reaction which he does with no lead up at all.

I had this experience in some of Sergio Leone's movies too. I find it in almost all of QT's films. I still think that some of his excesses are gratuitous, but maybe he wouldn't be Tarantino without his eccentricities.

This "essay" contains too many "I"s, lacks a degree of coherence and a conclusion, but that's the way it is if you put out your thoughts as you think them. Maybe like a Quentin Tarantino movie :)