I have often been told that on a flight to Nice in May, if I find a fellow passenger watching some cerebral, highbrow film on the plane’s entertainment system, then I can be sure s/he is not another beach bum on a holiday to the sunny French Riviera but a film worshipper on the way to pay obeisance at cinema’s grandest altar, Festival de Cannes.
I am also a firm believer in the religion called cinema. However, something prevents me from putting my best cinephile foot forward on any flight, even the ones headed to cinema’s top pilgrimage sites like Cannes, Toronto, Berlin or Venice.
Much has been written about aeroplane food: how the quantity of salt and sweet needs to be modified as our tastebuds transform thousands of feet above the ground. I wouldn’t mind someone probing the significant change in my taste in films.
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Why would a critic refuse to watch critically-acclaimed avant-garde films when she is 40,000-odd feet high? Why would someone who would kill to watch five obscure films a day during festivals barely watch one in a 10-hour flight?
Why would someone who baulks at films that others around her find entertaining suddenly develop this urge to rewatch episodes of a popular serial called Sarabhai vs Sarabhai ?
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In my limited experience, Singapore Airlines, followed closely by Emirates, wins hands down when it comes to the films on offer. It’s a veritable film festival at SQ. If your interest is contemporary South Korean cinema, then a 24-hour flight can leave you with research material worth a full-fledged Ph.D.
I have often been tempted by the embarrassment of riches; have sat down well-geared with headset with the aim of watching at least two “world-class” films on the way home to Singapore. But have had to call a stop within minutes and settle down with some relatively pedestrian movie.
The only time a celebrated film had my total attention on a flight was the recent Japanese cult zombie film One Cut of the Dead . Having missed it at the Jio Mami festival in Mumbai last year, I was ecstatic to have found it on a flight, and watched it riveted, laughing into my yoghurt and fruit bowl.
In the normal course of things Crazy Rich Asians would have my disapproval as wannabe Bollywood, but on a recent flight I found myself in the grip of the good-looking young lead and Michelle Yeoh.
For completely inexplicable reasons I have watched not just The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel but its sequel as well, and then justified it for three different reasons: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and the fact that I was up in the air.
Finding Feluda
I discovered the Bengali heartthrob Abir Chatterjee on a airline, as Feluda in Badshahi Angti. Since then I check out the Bengali film menu for his Byomkesh films whenever I fly. South Korean crime dramas is another genre I blame airlines for; Memories of Murder wouldn’t have happened to me were it not for a flight nor Detectives in Trouble. And this is the stuff I have never otherwise watched on the ground.
Could there be a rational explanation? Perhaps these are laid back, undemanding films that don’t ask for undivided attention, which is impossible to give in the midst of the service, the crying kids, the movement and chatter, the laughs, coughs and snores of the hundreds travelling with you. When suspended in time and space, perhaps one needs cinema that diverts the mind or soothes it.
When nothing manages to engage me, I often turn to the comfort of the familiar — a Bollywood/ Hollywood film from the 50s, a classic whodunnit or comedy. And if all else fails there is always Audrey Hepburn.
On the way to Cannes last Sunday I had several respectable Academy Awards titles to pick from. First Man, Black Panther, Green Book… I feasted on none. I didn’t even revisit my recent favourite — the deliriously romantic yet heartbreakingly political If Beale Street Could Talk. Instead I chose to watch Mr. Bean’s Holiday. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know that Cannes would certainly not approve of my choice.
namrata.joshi@thehindu.co.in