Saturday, June 21, 2008

Ashwin's (short) experience at the movie

In a certain non thinking moment, Raghu and I decided to take Ashwin to watch a movie Dashavatharam - a new movie starring Kamal Hassan in 10 roles. After that, we did not question our decision until we were at the movie.

In Perth, screening of Tamil movies is a rarity. There are no cinemas that regularly screen them and so an association has to rent the cinema premises for a screening. The seating is not reserved in this case but rather first-in-first-seated. The movie was supposed to be screened at 8:30 pm but was rescheduled to 9pm with no announcement whatsoever. We were at the cinema in the queue waiting to be seated at 7:30.

After a LOOONG wait, we were finally in the cinema and the screening began.

It started off well as the crowd welcomed Kamal Hassan with whistling and clapping and Ashwin joined right in. He doesn't need a reason to clap, just an excuse. And then it was time for the movie to start in full earnest. Ashwin turned to me and said ....

....

....

"Enakku veetuku ponum" (I want to go home).

(Did I mention that we paid 17AUD per person to watch this movie?)

Anyway, Raghu and I tried distracting him for a while and hoping he would fall asleep (fat chance, we are speaking about Ashwin). He kept insisting that he wants to go home and sleep. My heart went out to him when in a monent of quiet, he looked at the screen hopefully and asked "aachi?" (finished?) and when it started again, turned back to me with a nervous crestfallen "innum irukku". (There is more).

I realised he was scared and half an hour into the show, decided to leave with him.

There is an idol in a temple which gets thrown out. There is violence against the priest, affectionately known to Ashwin as "ummachi kaapaathu uncle". There are jerky movements and loud scenes. On the way home in the car, Ashwin announced, "Movie uncle bad boy. Movie nanna iyya" (movie was not good).

When I was putting him to sleep, he asked me "Amma, ummachi kaapaathu uncle yen kai poota?"

My poor baby, his serene secure experience of the temple and the priest was shaken.

I'm not making the same mistake twice, there are no more movies lined up in our plan.

But in fact, I am making the same mistake twice. A month ago, I took him to see "Horton hears a who" - an animation movie about an elephant called Horton and little people called whos. I paid AUD15.50 for the ticket and after an hour at the show, he was bored and wanted to go home.

Will I ever learn?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

How smart. Think, u must not go to such movies, until he fully understands