Quite by coincidence I watched two films on similar topics but with vastly different treatments. Both have been on my must-watch list for longer than a year and I ended up watching them over the same weekend.
Stop.
All of the times I’ve watched Guru Dutt’s magnificent film Pyaasa (1957) it has moved me to tears. To watch Vijay, the protagonist, struggle to make any progress with his obvious talent, to see the courage of Gulabo who puts her far greater problems aside to help someone else, to see the faithfulness of Abdul who never deserts his friend, these are all things that squeeze my heart out.
A football-crazy kid I know recently suffered an injury while playing. I was told that he started crying, which is natural, but not because of the pain (well maybe a little). It seems that some of the others he was playing with laughed at the manner he got injured and that humiliation is what brought tears to the kid’s eyes.
A woman jumps into a choppy sea to rescue the box of painting equipment that has fallen overboard. We form an image of her in our minds — an image that is not just of what we have seen with our eyes, but one where we see how attached she is to her art, and also how irreplaceable the equipment must be. We get to know a little more about the woman, Marianne, than we have been shown.
