Their films are our films too

It was Monday evening, and the parking boy in a lane near Metro theatre coolly told me: "Saab, aap France film festival ke liye ja rahe ho? Bees rupiya se nahin hoga. Movie lamba hai (You are going for the French film fest? Twenty bucks won't do, it's a long film)." I paid him Rs 40 for the parking.

The film was long.

Olivier Assayas' Carlos unfolded over five-and-a-half hours, and although many had to frantically call home at interval and explain that they were indeed in a movie which was the length of three movies, there was a robust crowd coming out at 1 am, drunk on images and in the after-grip of '70s terrorist Carlos the Jackal's powerfully-told story.

You do not associate Mumbai with that sort of deep affection and patience towards a cinema that requires viewer intelligence. For that matter, you do not expect Mumbai to come out pleasantly dazed from any cinema other than Bollywood. Unfortunately, just like in every other area of life, we tend to cast our perceptions in stone.

Only a few weeks ago, rivers of film fans flowed into a Juhu multiplex for the Mumbai film festival, demanding sitting norms be relaxed so they could watch their favourite movies.

Seven or eight years ago, I met filmmaker Subhash Ghai standing on the dark, hysterically-crowded aisle of the new IMAX theatre in Wadala to watch Abbas Kiarostami's And Life Goes On, shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary visitors at the film fest. Whether Kiarostami reflects in Ghai's work in another matter, but he certainly sweated with us to witness the slow, winding search for a child across a quake-torn Iranian countryside. I have seen that sort of childlike enthusiasm for arts, cinema or music in Kolkata, where you find a Mrinal Sen screaming "encore" at a Pete Seeger concert and women sobbing outside the auditorium for not being allowed in because of overcrowding. But in Kolkata, it is hardly surprising.

Beyond the day-dust of trade, enterprise, dhanda, Mumbai too loves its movies ufffdand different kinds of movies. Even five-and-a-half-hour movies like Carlos, which come in an extraordinary format. Scores of film libraries from Colaba to Bandra to Malad have been doing flourishing business in renting out some of the most obscure and avant garde world movies for almost a decade now.

Our exhibitors could perhaps start thinking differently. Every city in the world has only a small group of people interested in movies other than popular cinema. But in cities like Mumbai, even that small segment can be substantially big. Hypothetically speaking, one screen at a multiplex reserved for an international film festival showing 365 films a year (a new movie a day) may draw crowds almost every day, and could become the world movie destination of the city.

Incidentally, nine out of ten Bollywood movies run to empty houses after the first couple of days.

It is a clich ufffd, but a good movie is universal. It does not need an item number or slapstick or mush to be successful. For good cinema, you need invisible magic dust flying out of the screen into the audience. The sunlight through the forest canopy in Avatar settles on our seats, Michael Corleone goes with us to kill those who killed Luca Brasi, we watch a passing train with a breathless Apu from the kash fields, Gabbar sends his men to get us ufffdthat's what the magic dust does, the little satoris it brings in our lives.

Mumbai is resourceful. It knows its bootleggers on a dry day, it finds its way to the window seat on a packed train. I am sure it will secure its steady supply of magical cinema sooner or later.

That day, the parking boy, who knows the French film festival set, might take six hours off his work, catch Carlos, and comment: "Solid movie. Thoda jaldi khatam ho gaya (it seemed too short)."