Losing it at the Movies
A quirky,passionate collection about the joys of film.
The Popcorn Essayists is a great little volume of essays about film,by writers who dont watch films for a living. These are not arid pieces of film-studies exegesis,or self-indulgent fanboy stuff.
Kamila Shamsies thoughtful essay compares the expressive possibilities of writing and film,and the rare,sublime overlaps between the two. What can film do that prose fiction cannot? Lots. But,then,how do you convey a line like the radios sang out love all day long in film? She compares the different kinds of complexity and artfulness in Wim Wenders Wings of Desire and Michael Ondaatjes novels,and marvels at how prose can flip and spin through time in a way that is so laboured in cinema.
Anjum Hasan is the other high point,in her exploration of the Finnish Kaurismaki brothers. Even when you disagree with the writer as you inevitably will,given how ferociously individual a thing movie taste is,these essays are undeniably fun.
Essays are as much about the author as the subject,an exercise in self-exposure through a stab at the subject at hand. We are produced by the movies,in a pretty consequential way,and many of these articles are also about being intimately affected by cinema.
Manil Suri is asked to do a reading for the Brooklyn Book Festival,with the rider that he,like the other writers,has to take a risk,do something. He chooses to perform Piya tu ab to aaja in full drag,fishnet stockings and all nervously accepted by his partner and university president,he declares it one of the most ebullient,memorable experiences in his life. For the final verse,dressed in just my bra and skirt,I felt as liberated as Helen.
Sidin Vadukuts story is about his VHS-tape-dominated Gulf Malayali childhood. When he finally gets to watch Charlie Sheens Terminal Velocity in a movie theatre,it seems like the greatest movie ever made. Namita Gokhales piece is largely on Bollywood gossip and legend,the dumb,hypnotic pull of it and her own short-lived stint as the 20-year-old editor of a film mag,where the most bandied-about word was maha as in Rajesh Khanna was maha cool.
I cant name all the essays,but suffice it to say that nearly each one is interesting and worthwhile,and The Popcorn Essayists is a highly satisfying grab-bag.
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