Someone recently shared a video clip from a film, YJHD, on a social site, and it was shared further until a friend thought it a good idea to share it.
The very short clip is a part of the continuing argument between a couple that's not quite a couple, not quite friends, and have issues. He has had a life of highly vital sort, which he aspired to and had not only hoped but planned, and he's taking a break for a friend's wedding. She had been a studious classmate, thought she was boring, fell in love with him when he earnestly assured her she wasn't boring because she could get drunk and sing about kissing on Fridays, and has since lived where she always has, despite her mum planning to make her a medical doctor. The film never did quite make it clear if the mum succeeded in this project, and the daughter has the personality less of a successful doctor than of someone in a staid job she is bored with but thinks it's her duty to stay put and claim she finds enjoyable.
I was familiar with the film, and quite possibly, to begin with misunderstood the message, if only because I've been often accused of being the one that won't stay put loyally to claim supreme satisfaction in the spot one is in, but am honest enough to have loved various places and say so.
But having been perplexed about it later, naturally the attention turned to try and make sense of why I was sent the clip in a message. Which turned to thinking about the clip, the film, and more.
Possibly it had dawned on me before, but certainly became clear now, that the film is a bad copy of an original wonderful one that was our favourite circa mid eighties - My Dinner With Andre - which this director has pulverised and twisted and mixed with typical masala his style, to present something all at once supposedly glamorous, romantic, traumatic, patriotic and more; in this he might have succeeded with those that believe it's unnecessary to think. We, I recall, both fell deep asleep during this film, especially since it curtailed it's fledgling promise of the career of the aspiring hero taking a flight, and instead diverted into a song and drink medley with emotional exhortations about return of the native. We did see the film, but were impressed negatively and strongly so, so much so we stopped taking trouble to watch films in theatre and spending huge amounts that that entails.
But it's fortunate that the clip was sent to me and so it brought to attention precisely what is wrong with the pulverised copy of the wonderful original.
The original is a conversation between two very unlike guys, one who has had wonderful, out of the way experiences, as he's lived and travelled around the world, opening his inner vision and widening his consciousness in the process - and the other an average joe who has an average life, is happy with it, and towards the end of the very enchanting account of experiences of Andre, confused rather than thrilled he asks what's wrong being an average joe happy with his average life like everyone around.
In this clip, however, where the constant banter of the couple comes to a quiet boil, with her resisting him and his accounts as if it were a ping pong match she has to win, she delivers a smash that's not quite playing sport - by informing him that, since whatever choice one makes one is bound to miss something, one ought to reconcile to staying put exactly where one is and learn to like it! It isn't a volley, it's rather an irate bully hitting the winner on head with the bat - at close range.
And therein the fallacy, since the latter in no way follows from the former, by any twist of logic.
Clearly it's trivially obvious that wherever one is, one is missing every other spot in the universe at that moment, and this cannot be helped. It's equally clear that one may make one's choice, for the moment or for a future, which might be temporary or for life, as one sees fit. But it's equally clear that it in no way follows that one must stay and learn to like precisely what and where one has always been and done exactly what one always did.
If so, think about it - does that not wipe out the very notion of education, most of it, since it's about growth of mind and learning about times, places, any experiences of others? History, literature, even news and films and music is rendered negated by this diktat via strange logic that director has the woman expound, since it all takes one out of where one happens to be. As does most education of non primitive sort.
But mainly, the conclusion she forces with an unexplained process of not quite logic, is spurious, not because of its unavoidable implications, but due to it's inherent fallacy. For it is in no way clear that his choices are worse. And most of us make a choice most of the time this way is that, not by adhering to a stay or leave loyalty, but by one's own priorities and more leading one.
At that, this pulverised and more copy of the wonderful original has faults that are way beyond counting. The most obvious being, calling or labelling all studious or academic or intelligent people boring, and constant sponsorship of the drinking and mindnumbingly low level life as as fun. An obvious corollary of this is that the film shows the studious bright one stay home in a routine job, while the one who never did well academically is the one flying off with a scholarship abroad to a career he aspired to, with a glamorous life.
Glamour might be in the eye of the beholder, or the director in this case, but the fallacy is obvious here - just looking at the roster of those that do go abroad with scholarships, or look at the silicon valley for short.
That a life of mind, whether spent in one place or otherwise, is far from boring, but a life of alcoholic stupor mindnumbingly so, is perhaps beyond those that think this bad copy of a superb original was good. That they don't know about the original might make no difference to their taste, but that's a non sequitur.
