Day 3. 9th Dec 2009. I had made the promos for that night's movie with the tagline "Come and see what it takes to beat Lagaan". No Man's Land. (Danis Tanovic/2001/Bosnian). Some of you would have seen this movie; most of you would have heard about this movie. NML emerged the winner in the Oscars ceremony in 2002 and I vividly remember that day. I was in my final year of engineering. Dozens of us were in the common room watching the live relay from Hollywood. Lagaan had by then created waves all over the world. The simple storyline of David v/s Goliath set wonderfully in the pre-Independence India, with Goliath being the British and rustic Aamir as David had struck chord with everyone. AR Rahman's compositions had also mesmerised all. Lagaan ran for more than 3 hour 30 minutes without any dullness. Great job by Gowarikar. I remember even one of the IIMs had used Lagaan to teach management! No wonder that dozens of us were waiting for India and Aamir to hold the Oscar.
...and the Award goes to No Man's Land! Huge disappointment, then. NML is just the opposite of Lagaan. While Lagaan takes forward a simple plot in a highly entertaining way, NML presents us a grand plot covering global politics, cultural issues, military mindsets, patriotism, media hypes and a few more in a very simple yet a very hard hitting way - that too in just under 100 minutes! At the end of show everyone was left with a deep impact. It was a worthy defeat for Lagaan. Not many of us had seen such a movie before. The talks between the two men in the no man's land made us laugh at a few places but at the same time those dialogs were quite deep. What an end! I had another night of peaceful sleep. Some of the audience personally congratulated me for choosing NML! I plan to watch L'enfer by Danis Tanovic.
In the first place I was not sure whether to have The Counterfeiters (Stephen Ruzowitzky/2007/German) or this movie, Downfall, in the itenary. I decided to go ahead with The Counterfeiters. But just a few moments before I clicked "Print" in NIFF_Schedule.docx, I got The Counterfeiters changed to Downfall (Hirschbiegel/2004/Germany). Though a heavy movie, my friends would like to know Hitler's final weeks, I felt. I had seen this movie a few months back.
Being a Friday the audience count had touched thirty! The majority of them were due to the curiosity-factor. Anyway by then at least 25 viewers was the norm.
Though some more editing would have made the movie more riveting, at the end of the show everyone was feeling - heavy and as a part of one of the defining times of the modern world history. Downfall proved yet again that language does not matter...all it mattered was whether a movie is able to "connect" with the audience, and what is "new".
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