THE LEGEND OF 1900
It was holi, I was supposed to be playing colors and spoiling others faces too with gulal and all sorts of colors we could think off. But, destiny had altogether different plans for me… it was on the third afternoon, I was getting too bored sitting at home. The hype and hoopla and the people and media’s reaction to the film had almost settled in and I did not have anything else to do. I knew only one person will get me out of loneliness and boredom was Ashima, and without giving it a thought, I just messaged her what the plan was and whether we were meeting that evening or if she had another plans?
Cut to promptly comes in a reply “Dude tonight we are partying, come to our house by nine” that was it. OZ had forwarded me a mail that he received from the Artistic Director of the Indian Film Festival, Germany and the concerned person Mr. Reiss wanted to see my film and probably screen it too… so I had a job to do, I had to immediately post my DVD, which I did, came back home, went for my swimming, came back, got ready and left for Ashima and Kopals home sweet home and it is indeed a home sweet home…
Chandra our very intelligent, talkative and bully friend welcomes me by opening the door, and as time passes by there are close to thirty thirty five of us… or maybe more… I thank god that we played Dumb Charades and not any other games like trivial pursuit et al. these women always win… the holi celebration would not have been any better than this one… as we religiously do, we drank, laughed, played and danced till early in the morning, I think we must have slept by five or six am….
Cut to Out of focus, there are some sounds heard in the background, the frame is seen shaking… left, right, left right… any technical person would think that the camera is on a three axis head as we see the objects slowly coming to sharp focus…. white frame, with a fan directly staring into the lens of my eye… I have woken up… I look around… ashima is awake, Kopals awake, so is Jai the savior of our team… Hemant has already left for the shoot… Siddharth too is awake… I turn and toss in the bed, I don’t feel like getting up… but the thirst doesn’t let me lie down more as I get up to get some water to drink… holding my head… I see Kopal, Jai, Ashima at work… the house seems to be clean and new… these guys have cleaned it… completely as if there is no proof that there was a party last night. In my mind I feel extremely guilty that I could not contribute in cleaning the house. But all is well and happy, Kopal, Sid, Ashima, Jai are supposed to go to Navdeep’s house, one of their director friends for holi… they are getting ready… I go and freshen up too, Sweet that she is, Ashima promptly heats the food and hands it over to me and says “eat, you have a hangover na? You will feel better” I just do that and I am slowly getting to be myself…
Cut to – Everybody has left, my stomach is full, I am left all alone at Kopals house, lying in front of me is a TV and a DVD player… though I had inserted the DVD of the Legend of 1900 while these guys were still there, I decide to see it all over from the beginning. So its a film directed by G (I cannot spell his name yaar) Tornatore, the same guy who directed ‘Cinema paradiso’ and the film is about an abandoned baby on board the ship Virginian where this coal room worker Danny Boodman finds him and decides to bring him up in the belly of the ship where these guys keep working day in and day out. The baby gets a warm welcome from all his fellow crewmen and because he has found him on the first day of the brand new century, Danny B decides to call him Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900 (cos he is found in a Lemon crate imprinted with the titled T. D. Lemon). The director here again brings out some extremely gripping scenes between the father and the son, how he educates/teaches him in the ship, and how the kid learns to learn the piano on his own without being able to read the notes… Though Danny dies in an accident, the kid is left alone fully trained to live and survive on the ship…
Later on 1900 stays on the ship, entertaining the world, 2,000 people at a time. Though the story is narrated from the point of view of Max 1900’s best friend on the ship and his trumpeter, when he comes to sell his trumpet to this music shop… In a very emotional and touching scene where in after the deal is struck, max requests the shopkeeper to let him play the trumpet for one last time, and as he plays the tune, the old shopkeeper who keeps a good knowledge in music takes out an old record broken and reattached and starts playing it on his phonogram… as the story begins to unfold, Tornatore beautifully sketches the life of a boy who is found abandoned on this ship, his association with his father and how he becomes the most amazing pianist that his stories go beyond the limits of ocean, how he is once challenged by the guy who invented Jazz, the duel that takes place between the two are beautifully shot and most important of all, it captures the loneliness of a mind that attaches and relates itself to the ship that has been his house, till the time the ship is abandoned after the war and is ready to be destroyed…
The moment Max gets to know that the shopkeeper has found the tape on the abandoned ship called Virginian, he decides to go in search of 1900 and convince him to go with him and start life afresh…(will stop here as I would prefer you all to see it i don’t want to spoil it by revealing everything) I would recommend, one just rent a DVD and watch it… what a great way of celebrating holi, Thank you Kopal, Thank you Ashima… you made my evening, night, day and evening… Happy Holi…
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
i’ve seen the movie a couple of months back.
“did you see the streets? there are thousands of them. how do you? how do you choose just one? one woman? one house?”
that scene and dialogue still plays in my head. makes me wonder what i’m doing here and what am i going to do. so scary.
though the movie is just quite OK, its worth a watch just for the ending.
a good watch though, for me it makes an interesting watch because of the moments it captures… remember the only one time when max convinces him to step on land for once hand have a life? when he is standing on the step just standing in the middle of the steps where in he just stops looks ahead we see the skyline of NYC and there behind is the ship and how he makes up his mind not to go there but turn away and go back is i think shot very well… it works for me because it just managed to feel what 1900 would have gone through his life…
if you want to watch a movie which captures the moments…then you should watch the italian movie “La Meglio giovent
Hey Shiva – thanks for that recommendation…
Interesting article and also raises the curiosity to watch that film.
Personally i have felt that more than mother-son, its the father-son relationship in a film that is more intriguing like recently The Puruit of Happyness or Life is Beautiful.
Perhaps its because such films bring out more sensitive side of a male.
cheers for the article
Rreena
:d hahaha Rreena, well said but I like ‘I am Legend’ with Will Smith better.