Reel-ing

There are movies and there are movies.... Some leaves us prelexed, some elate.
They stay with us and grow with us, sometimes as constant companions and some other times as signpost's.
My journey, with and through movies have been one of the most fulfilling and facinating.
Some of them have stayed with me ever since I saw them, they just refused to go away.
One such movie is 'Anand' the 1971 classic by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Nothing can stop you from admiring the story, direction and acting, its a tragedy which is so full of life. In 1971 the soon to be legend Amitabh Bachan is six filims old and the performance gives you a window to what was going to be the era of the 'Angry Young Man of Indian Cinema'. He performs with such intensity. He brings to screen the pain and grief any doctor would have felt in India of 1970's, the sight of a sick nation, with nothing near to a solution visible.Its high hopes after independence has't reached anywere near reality. A nation is in despair. Even Anand, played by the ever charming Rajesh Khanna is a symbol of the larger picture, inflicted with a disease which has no cure. The helplessness makes the doctor angry with grief, he is angry with himself for his own and the nations inability to find solutions to its problems. The nation has lost its hope and Anand has lost his love. He is an orphan and comes to Bombay to spend the last days of his life there in company of  friends as soon as he looses his love and any hope to life in Delhi, perhaps the most wounded city in the history of modern India.. The orphan motif is widely used in hindi cinema of the era as a symbol of rootlessness caused by partition and oher constant hardships life inflicted on the population. Its a feeling of being orphaned that is more acute rather than actually been orphaned. The journey of popular Indian hindi cinema has always been linked to the narrative of the nation by many scholars like Aashish Nandy.  Anand asks us not to loose faith and exalts us to keep the show going, for its not just a show; its life. Its the message of the greatest showman of Indian Cinema- Raj Kapoor to whom 'Anand' is dedicated. The movie asks us to hope and live on as its futile to fight life. It symbolises our best survival tactic; to internalise the circumstance and live through it rather than fight a battle which you are sure to loose. There is more than one reason that 'Anand' will remain one of my all time favourite movie.