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December 29, 2009

The 3 Idiots – it is about the message, stupid!



Any review of a film like Three Idiots must needs be undertaken at a few levels. At the most superficial level, the film is a simple comedy about life in an engineering college hostel, full of gags and puerile humor - but films like Singh is Kinngg and Kambakht Ishq have shown us that this kind of humor works! Three guys meet, one is UNIQUE and smart without trying, GENIUS even - Rancho or Ranchoddass. They bond over lots of time spent in the hostel bathroom and drinking on the rooftop. The headmaster is a tartar and in an attempt to foil him they get into trouble, are nearly thrown out except that Rancho miraculously fashions a baby vacuum device to deliver the headmaster's grandson on the college ping-pong table. Then Rancho mysteriously disappears, and the other two Idiots go on a search for Rancho, find him and ALL IZZ WELL.

Well that is the story in a nutshell and it is simplistic, like most efforts by Raju Hirani, and it is full of moments that you will laugh at. But Raju Hirani is not like Hrishikesh Mukherjee - he is not happy simply serving us a slice of everyday life. The slice has to be garnished with a message, some life changing message that will make us go WOW! He tried it with the two MunnaBhai films and tries to top that effort with his latest film.

So after JAADU KI JHAPPI and GANDHIGIRI, what is the message this time around? It is actually something we saw in TZP, to let a student (child there, adult here) do their thing! In the age of scientific innovations and inventions, the main message to parents is to stop forcing the kids to be engineers. The message to the teachers is to teach differently - to stop teaching theory and to teach engineers how to make baby-suction machines, little choppers with cameras, and so on and so forth. The message is that these hard-ass professors are forcing students to commit suicide, that deadlines are meaningless and that deadlines force students to suicide. Three times students attempt suicide, twice successfully, and the headmaster is told it was MURDER. I am reminded of a cousin telling us that kids were not being allowed to be kids - the HATYARA master hired to get us to complete our homework was eating into our playtime! I just saw a Tweet from someone who was inspired by 3 Idiots to go and kill all his teachers from Engineering school!! How much does parental expectation weigh a 19 or 20 year old down? The message of Joseph Campbell telling people to follow their bliss is one to keep in mind here. I found this part the hardest to swallow as I was able to forge my own path and make my own choices despite strong parental pressures and directives. Not once did any of it make a thought of suicide flit across my consciousness. Parents do try to live their life vicariously through that of their children, desperately trying to make sure their child does not make the same mistakes they did, BUT each generation has to make its own mistakes and learn from them! Hirani's message is too ham-fisted to even register as anything meaningful. Coming to teachers - innovating in teaching is indeed necessary. BUT in 3 IDIOTS all we see are two teachers, and nothing there about exactly WHAT is wrong with the teaching methods. If we are to believe the headmaster, this is the premiere engineering institution - so can we compare it to the IITs? And then can we say that teaching is useless and by rote there? Do students come out having accumulated useless knowledge?

At the next level we can examine if the message in 3 Idiots is practical, and responsible. This is an era when enrollment in the pure sciences has seen a drop across the globe. And it is not because of lack of demand, the challenges to innovate in physics, math, chemistry and biology continue unabated. BUT today children of the elite are going into management - it represents instant and good money. And the ordinary working class kids who can speak the speak want to work in call centers, again instant money - so engineering seems a soft target! But what the film-makers forget is that the Indian engineering colleges created the brain power that is running technology in many a country, it has given us a sort of intellectual superiority in the tech game. Is it practical to deem it all useless? What exactly is wrong? Is it teaching by rote? Can innovation and practical knowledge be absorbed without theory? What is the way to teach a populace that has come through a school system where memorizing is the way to excel? These obvious questions need to be answered, but before that they have to be posed, and they never are! Grades are deemed unimportant but in situations where 300 apply for campus interviews - even selection for interviews based on grades! One wonders how the Sharman Joshi character ever got to the interview table after coming last in class CONSISTENTLY!

Next I want to examine the script of 3 Idiots. The film is full of comic gags, many of which are so stale as to not even be funny anymore. The Astronaut pen thing is old as the hills. The late exam scene is copied from an ad film, Rancho is a gardener's son and a genius who is discovered by the teachers doing math well above his level on the board, just as Will is a janitor and genius who is discovered solving high level math problems in Good Will Hunting! Sloppy writing not expected from Mr. Hirani's team. There are coincidences galore, a student dies just as his project is completed by Rancho, sent soaring to his room height and the camera sees him hanging from the ceiling. Boman's own son has committed suicide from parental pressures! And while evoking a 60s B and W film in Sharman's near destitute family is good for some laughs, the family is really that way and is used in several gags in a near tasteless way. The prime one is taking the paralyzed father to the hospital strapped to a scooter, and then telling the comatose Sharman that his mother has a new sari., father is well now and sister is getting married without dowry. Was this supposed to make me laugh or cry? Replacing chamatkar with balatkar was good to hear about twice - at the 15th time it began to pall. An why was replacing "dhan" with "stan" even funny at all? The cool and laughing minister quickly lost his cool at that one! The teaspoon peeing + electrocution gag seems to have been a favorite of Mr. Hirani's, as he uses it twice! And baring the butt at the slightest provocation, peeing on the headmaster's door, and stealing an exam all seem to be fair game in the film. Give me Rocket Singh's candid admission of pass with 37% after grace marks ANY DAY!

More on acting, music etc. here

6 comments:

Khanabadosh said...

Nice layered review :)

I may not agree with some of the points (haven't seen the movie) because they are matter of individual taste but I do agree with your commentary on education ("...we can examine if the message in 3 Idiots is practical...").

Pardesi said...

Thanks Khanabadosh! Your views are always unique and appreciated.

SDT said...

Nice ! Ohh the word 'Message' ! Was there any message at the first place? What I got some preaching of sort by the pop-philospoher Mr Khan. May be I was an Idiot who could not get the message. :)

Talking about 'humor'in the film (I found most of them unfunny), the one line in Rocket Singh " Customer ke naam pe hi MAR likha hai" will outshine the so called satricical/ironical humor in 3 Idiots.

As you have rightly said the scenes invloving Sharman's family were the worst part in the film. Shameless manipulation that is what I call.Tasteless.

Pardesi said...

Thanks Som - indeed the pop-psychology message was the worst part of the film. Without that I would have been able to stomach the gags and everything else. The writing was juvenile and could not match the incomparable chemistry between Circuit and Munnabhai in either of the two Munnabhai films. This was more like a serious TZP diluted with gags.

Pardesi said...

Now Chetan Bhagat upset with 3 Idiots!!

http://www.entertainmentandshowbiz.com/3-idiots-chetan-bhagat-author-of-five-point-someone-is-upset-with-aamir-khan-want-to-know-why-2009122928026

Chetan Bhagat the author of Five Point Someone and Aamir Khan’s latest movie 3 Idiots is based on it. Chetan is upset over the fact that the filmmakers have not given him his due credit for the film!

Well he says “Almost any film made worldwide on a book always has proper acknowledgment to the writer.” Hello another movie released earlier this year has acknowledged his credentials but it seems 3 Idiots has completely omitted that. Neither Raju Hirani nor Vidhu Vinod Chopra has ever spoken of him at any of the press conferences.

Couple of days back Aamir Khan has disclosed that he has never read Chetan Bhagat. “I have only read the script and not the book yet” says the actor. He further added “For me, the script is very important and so are the dialogues.” Probably he just wants to show his marketing skills and how far can he go for that and of course acting. Another reason could be that he thinks he is the only artist around in India.

Chetan apparently is very disappointed in the entire team of 3 Idiots. He says the film has “75 per cent of the film was based on my book” in contrary to the prevalent notion that only 20% of it has a similarity. The author says “The makers of 3Idiots have legitimately taken the rights (of the book) and made the payments, but somehow they wanted to project that this is their story. But you can’t do that with a book like Five Point Someone, which is the highest selling book in the country.”

Pardesi said...

Interesting comment from Rangan on his blog: argumentativeindian: Yeah, the Khan was slightly “conscious” here. BTW, I was talking to someone in the industry about how they’d (reportedly) erased Aamir’s age lines using VFX, and how that was a fantastic effort in a film culture where heroes expect us to believe they;re young despite jowls and paunches and wrinkles. (The ideal, of course, would be to hire a younger actor, but if you HAD to cast Aamir, this was definitely the way to do it. He looked younger, in fact, than Madhavan and Sharman.)

And then this guy mentioned that this may be the first time it’s done for a hero, but it’s done ALL THE TIME for heroines, to remove dark circles and lines and so on. Thinking back, this sounds so obvious, that the cinematic equivalent of airbrushing would happen with heroines — but somehow I was a little let down. I mean, the only thing half these girls have going for them is their faces, and now even that’s a con

http://www.desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/2009/12/26/review-3-idiots/

His review is a good one too, and he worries about Hirani turning into a Bhandarkar!

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