Musings on 96 (film)

Life happens between “what if” and “what is”.

The chirping of winged angels at dawn wakes you up a tad too early. You’re jolted out of your dreams, but don’t have the heart to awaken into reality yet. In that chasm slip memories of yore. Some sweet, some sour. You look at your younger self with nostalgic yearning.

Then, something hits you hard: the missed opportunities. What if in that critical crossroad of life you took a different path? What if you persisted a bit longer instead of yielding to circumstances? What if you had given up on that futile endeavour and focused on something worthwhile?

But, that road is long gone. You can’t go back. You must wrestle with “what is”!

The mind, stealthily, begins to rein the heart gone haywire and reasons: things could have been worse. Indeed, you second that; though amused. Could it be because man is a rationalizing animal and not the rational one we've prematurely assumed? Slowly, the mental fog is dispersed by the warm touch of morning rays. The moment is gone; for good. While you fret over daily routine, you're greatly grateful about whatever gifts life has presented you with.

For long, regional cinema has grappled with the binary of commercial and realistic films. Make it too commercial, it begins to feel jaded and clichéd. But bending it too close to reality makes it a terrible proposition for an ordinary film-goer who watches movies precisely to escape the dull monotony of his life.

96 is one rare film that successfully strikes the golden mean. On the surface, you could sum the plot in three words: life after love-failure. But that’s over-simplifying it, because the movie is much more.

Here, the male protagonist is introduced through a song, but wait, not in that routine self-aggrandizing number. The lead is seen travelling the breadth of India and capturing the breath-taking moments around him. Because he has to, he’s a professional travel photographer. And, that he’s alone and lonely is reinforced by both the lyrics and the way camera-lens (not his, the director’s) sees him.  This is a textbook example of how a character can be familiarized in a span of just a song, and you must watch if you haven’t. Go on, we’ll wait.

Back? To continue, a chance visit to his native Thanjavur and his school floods his mind with nostalgia. He finds his way into the WhatsApp group (some hilarious chat in there), and soon enough a get-together is arranged. But (no prizes for guessing), there’s deeper reason why he chose to be isolated and unmarried so long. In the past lies a cute love story of two teens well-aware of the mutual attraction to one-another. Cut to present, his old flame unexpectedly shows up at the get-together, lightening his life (and our eyes too; Trisha is welcomed with thundering applause).

Will they patch up and live happily ever after? This is where the story soars above the ordinary, and takes us on a magical journey. She’s a NRI wife, well-settled in Singapore and has a girl-child. To steer clear of other clichés, she’s happy (or at peace as she says) and has no intention to disrupt her current life.

But what’s she after? She just wants answers. She wants to dig the skeletons of past and give them a proper burial they deserve. She wants to mourn the death of their still-born love. She wants to cry her heart out. All so that both of them can bid a final goodbye to the past and move on with present.

A female friend once commented about the impossibility of making films like Before Sunrise / Noon / Sunset in Indian cinema. I’m happy to share that 96 is a fitting Indian response to that accusation. Though the device of conversation driving the story seems borrowed, the presentation is refreshingly original.

As we travel with the story, we understand why their love was ill-fated from the start. It’s not about why it couldn’t happen, but why it didn’t happen. And, though they may put the blame at destiny’s doorstep, their own unconscious workings led them to the where they are today. Doubly reinforcing that they weren’t meant to be together! They had a role to play, important at that, but in the larger scheme of affairs their tenure in each other’s life was meant to be brief.

Did you ever re-imagine the past with you making the right choice (with benefit of time-machine induced hindsight). Because, the movie does that too. And, this is the most poignant portrayal of lost opportunity, because the audience all along aware that this never happened, also gets to see how beautiful it could have been.

Once the blank spaces of life are filled, once the answers are found, once the meaning is extracted from the suffering, it’s time for let go and move along.  How the lead couple embraces the reality is best left unmentioned here. What-if scenarios are the castles in the air. Our life is what is. For every success story, there are thousand tales of failure. For every fruitful effort, there are many who followed the exact steps and yet emerged disappointed.

96 is a unique blend of unvarnished realism and measured optimism. Post-failure, the male protagonist doesn’t dash himself to pieces ala Devdas, he tastes professional success and lives a comfortable, though aloof life. The female lead isn’t reconciled to a torturous husband and circumstances; she leads an affluent but dull life. But isn’t that the story of many of us: neither a total failure, nor an overwhelming victory, but somewhere in between.

And, to return to where we started, if in those morning musings we feel that despite some soul-crushing experiences, life has given us plenty to feel grateful about, isn’t that a life worth celebrating?