My First Big Screen Sci-Fi (My Story – Part II)

I have been at this one for the last 5 days. Finally, I have some time to finish it…

My 2nd semester a IITK (or was it the first? I am not so sure). We had Umang, our annual student film festival, organized by the SFS, Student’s Film Society. That year, the entire schedule consisted of 14 movies spread over Thu (3), Fri (3), Sat (4) and Sunday (4).

As I was looking at the SFS Poster on our notice board. A friend of mine stopped next to me and said “This is a stupid schedule. I wanna see all these movies, but no way I can watch 14 movies in 4 days.” I just casually replied “It’s not a big deal. I can do it.” With a wide smirk on his face he said “Yeah” and walked away.

As I followed him behind into the mess hall for dinner, I pondered over the idea and realized; it was really not that big a deal. So I thought maybe I will give this a shot. I discussed this with other guys who said that no one can survive through the entire experience of watching through movies continuously for 4 days on a huge screen like our auditorium. One of my seniors overheard the conversation and said “Maybe in your 2nd or 3rd year. You’re too inexperienced to handle this.” There was a pun intended in the word ‘inexperienced’ but I got what he wanted to say.

We have a huge auditorium, 1000+ capacity, at iitk. And believe me, staring at its screen continuously for 4 days was no fun. Still at that time it sounded like fun to me, so I had to try that. Especially when the list included movies like

1. The Matrix
2. No Man’s Land
3. Lagaan
4. Hannibal
5-14. Rest of the data is missing from my memory. Could be accounted to the possible brain damage I might have sustained during this endeavour

The above ones also I remember only because of the special circumstances surrounding them. I will list them in reverse chronological order on why is that.

4. Hannibal – I had made through the first 2 days, Thu(3) & Fri(3), and 2 movies on Saturday. Now my stamina was being taxed to its limits. I had to practically hit myself in the head to keep myself awake. Also anyone who has seen Hannibal, especially when you haven’t seen The Silence of the Lambs, can understand that it can be difficult to keep interest in it, especially when you are dealing with movie exhaustion. Still I continued with surprising determination.
But then close to its ending when I saw Dr. Hannibal Lecter making a guy eat pieces of his own brain. It was enough to knock me out of my sleep. Luckily horrorific scenes don’t scare me, otherwise it was a pretty gory scene.  Still, after that, I didn’t have to try hard to stay awake through the last movie of the day.

3. Lagaan – There were only two reasons I went to see this movie. First, the movie got nominated at Oscars. Second, it was in the schedule and I had planned to see all the movies in the Festival. Still I do have to admit, I did have a good time.

2. No Man’s Land – Come to think of it, it was good planning. Lagaan followed by the movie which beat it at the Oscars. The auditorium was packed. Though after watching it I could see why that happened. If Lagaan was great then this was a masterpiece.

1. The Matrix – We had a subject in first year, Math101. It had something called matrices. And why we studied it is something that has always eluded me. So even after my pledge for watching all the movies I was a bit skeptic. So I went around looking for feedback from those who had already seen it. They all said only one thing “You have to see it for yourself.” So I recalled my pledge and tried to convince myself to see it.
So came the auspicious day when I walked into the auditorium to see it, my first science-fiction on big screen. And from the minute I sat down on my seat, to the moment where Morpheus says “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.“, till its ending has been the best movie going experience of my entire life.

After watching The Matrix in Umang I got it on VCD and saw it almost every alternate day through my entire summer breaks. There were moments when my father would come back from the office. Look at the TV for a moment and say to my mother “So he is watching the same movie again. When will I see the news.“

Till this date, I have seen The Matrix at least 75 times. I have it’s each and every dialouge committed to my memory. The Wachowski Brothers, Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski, did a fantastic job in creating this movie and I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen when I saw it for the first time. Even now if I catch it running anywhere then I cannot move from that place until the last scene.

So this was another episode from the life of Gaurav Kumar Gupta. Keep looking, there will be more…