Romantic Tension in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

—

 

I am a sucker for really sweet romantic tension, so I enjoyed watching Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The film is full of scenes where the facial expressions, body language, and camera work builds tension around looking and creating different threads of unsaid connections between people. One of my favorite scenes is where Rahul and Anjali see each other again after many years. This clip narrows down to just the two of them so fast and I love it. It's like they are in their own world. All other sounds fade and the camera dollys into Anjali's face as they make eye contact. They are so caught up in the moment that after Rahul yells "Anjali", no says anything for about 24 more seconds--whereupon Rahul says "uh hi" with a look of wonder. The backgrounds behind each of them are unfocused which furthers that sense of being in their own world of romantic tension even more. When they walk up to each other their body movements are kind of awkward, but also really sweet at the same time. Past tensions created by college and the passing of time collide here. There is this sense of happiness mixed with awkwardness in their body movement. I think that it's really interesting watching how much each little movement furthers this connection and tension between the two of them that the film builds up previously to this moment.


 


Comments

  1. AmyNovember 23, 2020 at 6:16 AM

    It's interesting to me how the film really rotates around creating a story world in which only Rahul and Anjali count and a story world that includes a very wide cast of characters and locales as far away as Scotland. Its classic Bollywood in that it is able to do that very well. It creates a narrative arc that is wide and also deep.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Look at The "Make Em' Laugh" Scene & The Hollywood Musical

Image
  The Hollywood musical attempts to create a bridge between live performance and the industrial film productions of Hollywood. The sense of engineering in film is masked with bricolage and crafted communities within productions. The churning out of films is made to look more human and folk rather than products removed from the audience.  With these points in mind, I want to look at one particular scene in Singing in The Rain. The  "Make 'Em Laugh" number features Cosmo goofily (and incredibly athletically) dancing through a set that is in the middle of being put together. The scene is sparked by a somewhat gloomy Don Lockwood getting cheered up by Cosmo. It is a friend who sees Lockwood and in turn acts to change that--showing human connection. I think that in a way, this gets at that sense of crafted community that the Hollywood musical aimed to create. The fact that Lockwood is an actor is highlighted in this moment but he still shows that he encountered trouble in lif...
Read more

The inescapable Reality of Time & The Bicycle Thief

Image
     Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief explores Italian Neorealism’s sense of reality in many ways, but one mode that I find particularly interesting is the way in which time seems to incessantly flow forward in the world of the film. Much like in the everyday world, time, and the harsh realities that ensue, is inescapable.  Antonio Ricci is stuck in the forward momentum of the necessity of finding his bike in order to work and feed his family. I think that this pull onward is reflective of the inescapable pull of time that we experience in real life. In a film, time can be manipulated and paused and sped up—but to a family struggling to keep afloat that inescapable pull forward can contribute to a threatening spiral initiated by one thing going wrong. The loss of the bike is much more than the loss of one physical option, but rather the threat of the loss of food and wellbeing for his family.  When leaving the house with his bicycle on his shoulder, Ricci cl...
Read more

The 400 Blows

Image
      The film The 400 Blows by François Truffaut is a prime example of a French New Wave film. It features many of the qualities that new wave filmmakers valued in a production. Some of which includes the rejection of authority, handheld camera work, distancing tactics, and city-scapes. Paris unrolls beneath Antoine’s feet with lingering shots that enable the viewer’s eye to roam the street. He often darts through traffic without a second look at the cars and their traffic laws. There are plenty of street scenes in the film that give the eye enough time to roam around the frame--exploring free from the guiding hand of cuts. The lack of editing in these parts helps create that sense of freedom and sense of participation that the French New Wave thinkers incorporated in their works. Eugene McCreary in “Film History: New Wave Cinema and ‘68” states, “The spectator was free, or at least freer, to notice something of his own choice, to permit his attention to linger on a...
Read more