Happy Endings

If someone from outside India, who has no previous exposure to Hindi movies, is handed over a task of finding some common themes among the movies across the ages - then "happy endings" is surely going to be one of the top result. This thought has been on my mind since long time but I was motivated to put it in words today when I watched "Rock On". With some unusual screenplay and scene sequence, as the movie progressed towards the climax I got a feeling that the director might choose not
to put all the things in place. I thought the movie was going to end during the final stage performance by the rockband and it would be left upon the viewers to speculate the ending -- whether everyone is going to be again well set or things are going to remain the same for some. But the director seemed to be skeptic about the success of such open ending movie and chose to follow the suit.

From the likes of Shammi kapoor movies to recent movies like Delhi6, movie makers seem to have agreed to introduce some unrealistic sequence to give a complete ending to the movie. In Dil Chahta Hai, where Akshay Khanna meets and become friend with this girl suddenly in the end does not seem to fit with the scheme of things.

I feel Open-endings are somewhat difficult to digest. There was a chapter in our English curriculum in class xth named "The Lady and the tiger". A guy, who is on a trial for loving the princess, is signaled towards a door by his lover ( the princess who is sitting in spectator's rows) and it is left to viewers to imagine the what lies behind the door -- death by a tiger or a happy married life ( with some other lady). I still remember how dissatisfied I felt after reading the story. I mean how can a story have no ending!!

Lately, I have realized happy endings phenomenon in non-Hindi movies also. I have not seen many of Chinese movies but the few I have seen (like forbidden kingdom) totally seem to follow the pattern that each character in the movie should be satisfied and the audience go back happy, not needing to think about any character. There might be various reasons to happy endings: like the movies are watched more as source of entertainment and not as a source of intellectual stimulation. All of us want to go to theater, have fun and come back happily.

I remember a discussion I had with one of my friend long time back about this. One main thing which came out was that emotional and sad situations actually create a more lasting impact on people's minds. For example, if you ask someone about their favorite song then more often than not its some emotional song with a deep
meaning and not a simple happy number. In some sense, this kind of compulsion of giving a happy ending to the movie might have limited the complete emotional effect of movie on people.

It would have been really interesting to know box office response to Rock-On if it would not have shown the last two minute sequence and actually ended the movie at last stage show.