I have recently seen the new Bollywood hit movie, The Three Idiots. Plot, characters, humour, scenery – as well as a window into what ‘doing life’ in India involves. It is the total package. I loved it (despite a dubious bit here and there!).

But the director does two things which every movie director seems to do. Enough is enough. I have been sitting on these observations for years. Yes, they do frustrate me! If I sit on them any longer I will find myself sitting on a couch receiving professional help.

Are you ready? Here goes…

Whenever there are suitcases being carried in a movie, why are they always empty? Unless they are the focus of attention – like in the movie from my childhood, If Its Tuesday It Must Be Belgium, when tourists pack their suitcases with stuff stolen from the hotels in which they’ve stayed in Europe and then the suitcases burst all over some steps in the film’s denouement scene – suitcases are always empty. You can tell by the lack of strain in the hand which carries them. This piece of inauthenticity always helps me remember that movies are fake.

Whenever the plot reaches its nadir, that low point where tension and emotion are most evident, why does it always seem to rain? Yes, I know that this has been a deliberate strategy of the movie director over the years. They have even been trained to do this. But this viewer would like to put his hand up and say that rainy nadirs no longer cut it. They’ve gone a bit stale on me and tend to snap me out of the tension and emotion that the director is trying to build in me.

Ahh – I feel so much better now. And you can be sure that if ever I direct a movie the suitcases will be heavier and the nadirs will be drier.

nice chatting

Paul