Of BHollywood and Hotel Rwanda

The movie season continues. First it was Hollywood-Bollywood and then Hotel Rwanda.

Hollywood-Bollywood is a light movie based on the "Immigrant-theme" and the ABCD generation.
Lisa Ray was charming as usual. Rahul Khanna is a good actor but has done very limited number of films till now. One dialogue which I liked from the Movie was when Rahul Khanna start thinking that Lisa ray was a prostitute, he tells her this:

"Sue, As such it doesn't matter but those middle class values are too deeply ingrained in me". (Not the exact words but something similar)

I found it to be so true, those "Indian middle class values" and the fact that they are imbibed deeply in such families.

Hotel Rwanda was a vastly different movie. That was not an accident pick, I wanted to see that for some time. I had heard and seen on TV about the Rwanda genocide of 1994, I did some searches on the internet out of my interest and came to know that about a million people were killed by the hut militia.

The movie though was a far more detailed account of what happened there. The story is a real life story of a Hotel Manager Paul Rusesabagina and his heroic handling of the situation which led to the saving of 1200 innocent lives.

There were two main ethnic groups in Rwanda: the Hutus and the Tutsis. Their mutual hatred was a result of the colonial past, The Belgian rulers gave the Tutsis privileges in the power structure so the Hutus started feeling alienated. It reminds me of the "Divide and Rule" policy of the British in Indian subcontinent.

The movie is a brave attempt at shaming the international community to not to forget Africa and not let such a shameful thing happen again.

In the features section of the DVD there was a video clip of real life Paul Rusesabagina visiting Rwanda for the first time after the genocide. There were clips of tens of human skeletons (Including those of small babies) lying in the rooms of the "Genocide Memorial" in Rwanda. Its unimaginable that such a thing really happened.

Of "Notting Hill" and our resistance to change

Notting hill remains one of my favorite movies. Having seen it on star movies umpteen times I remember a lot of its dialogues too.
The most touching scene is when Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) tells Hugh Grant:

Let me tell you, this fame thing is not real, and don't forget that I am also just a girl, standing in front of a boy asking him to love her.

Gosh! the dialogues are so good...

I equally like the soundtrack too, particularly:

It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart

and She

In the DVD which I borrowed from the library there were other features too. There were a 3-4 scenes which were shot but later deleted from the movie, looking at them I felt that it was a good decision, but then had they been part of the movie originally I don't think I would have mind.

Its amazing how we get used to things as they are and can't imagine them to be something else.

Talking in the context of movies, "Swades" was supposed to have Amir Khan as the lead actor but since he refused Shahrukh Khan was chosen. Having seen the movie I can't imagine anybody else playing that role other than Shahrukh! Perhaps in this case it is his excellent acting and screen charisma which is responsible for it.

I am able to relate this to a number of other things in life and I feel that things which we (if I may take the liberty to generalize for everybody) like or which are considered good by us, we are not willing to change anything in them. I guess this is what is called "Resistence to change" and the book "Who moved my Cheese" was all about it.