This weekend, Michele and I attended a Bollywood film at the Castro called Om Shanti Om, part of the South Asian Film Festival.
I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen Bollywood, but for me, this is the pinnacle of filmmaking. The Bollywood films I’ve seen have everything I like — musical numbers, bright colors and glitter, romantical scenes, over-the-top comedic sidekicks — and nothing I hate — realistic violence, realistic drama, realistic anything. Om Shanti Om is no exception.
The climax of the first act in this 3.5 hour movie comes when the hot pencil-mustache-wearing villain locks his pregnant wife in an abandoned movie set and lights the whole thing on fire, leaving her to die. (Even I couldn’t be offended by this, because the melodrama was so high there was nothing to do but laugh.)
Walking home, I mused, “You know, I just don’t really think a guy is hot unless he’s willing to set a pregnant woman on fire.” I paused, then confessed, “sometimes I wonder whether Gene would really do that.”
“Maybe if she messed with his phone,” Michele suggested.
