Going to the Movies: Then vs Now

Both, the kind of movies I watch and the way I watch those, has changed completely over the years

I haven’t been inside a movie theatre in… I don’t know, maybe 16-17 years. I do watch a fair number of movies, but most of the time that’s on my PC monitor, a 27-inch LG unit, with the PC itself being hooked up to a pair of powerful Edifier stereo speakers. And since I’m usually the only one in our house who watches the movies I watch, this setup works just fine for me – I don’t really feel the need to get a 65-inch TV or visit a movie theatre. But it wasn’t always like this. Allow me to explain.

I was born in Lucknow in the early-1970s, grew up there, went to school and college and, briefly, ran a business there for two years before moving to Bombay. Like it is for millions of Indians who were born in the 1970s, films – mainstream Hindi films – were a mainstay of my childhood, the primary form of ‘entertainment.’ From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, at least once a month, my father, mother, sister and I went out to watch a movie, usually an evening show that started at 6 p.m. Of course, there were no multiplexes back then and we’d always go to one of the nice, air-conditioned, single-screen movie theatres in and around Hazratganj – Sahu, Mayfair, Basant, Leela, Novelty, Pratibha and maybe one or two others.

My father always tried to get the best seats for us and while I don’t remember ticket prices since this was 40-45 years ago, he tells me that a ‘balcony’ ticket used to cost around two rupees back then. I enjoyed watching movies with my parents – Amitabh Bachchan action movies were my favourite and while I found song-and-dance routines a bit boring, the action sequences were very enjoyable! But no matter how good the movie, the half-way ‘interval’ was always welcome because that’s when my father and I (and my sister, if she wasn’t already asleep by then) would step out to buy some popcorn, samosa, a packet of chips, Coke or an ice-cream etc. This ritual was, for me, an inalienable part of going to a movie theatre. The movie would then be followed by chaat (aloo tikki, matar, dahibade and golgappe!) at Shukla Chaat House in Hazratganj, or a Chinese meal at the charming old Ranjana restaurant (which sadly shut down a few years ago), whose fragrant chow mein and fried rice I still miss after all these years. But sometimes, we skipped Ranjana and Shukla Chaat House and went to the Ritz restaurant (no relation to the Ritz-Carlton chain of hotels!) in Mahanagar for some masala dosa, or to Chung Fa for a bit of Chinese. Once done with food, we’d pile on to my father’s Bajaj Chetak scooter for the short ride back home. For me, nothing can beat the memory of those days, of going to watch movies with my parents, of rides on my father’s scooter and the wonderful meals we had together. Going to the movies was just such a happy experience.

Today, most teenagers will probably find this funny, but right up until I was in the 10^th standard in school, I rarely – if ever – went to the movies with my friends. From what I can remember, all my movie-watching was done with my parents and I was quite happy with that. It was only in 1988, when I cleared the 10^th standard and moved out from the strictly-administered confines of St. Francis College to the rather more liberal Lucknow Christian College that I started going to the movies with my friends. I think the first movie that a bunch of us went to, was the Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit starrer, Tezaab. We – I think it was 6-7 of us – decided to bunk school to go and watch Tezaab. We took our bicycles and sneaked out of school, pedalled our way to the movie theatre that was 3-4km away, bought the cheapest tickets available and had an absolutely glorious time watching that movie. One of my friends, Ashish, was so besotted with Madhuri Dixit’s beauty that he went on to watch Tezaab a dozen times over the next few months!

Watching movies at home was also taking on a whole new dimension by the late-1980s. While my father had bought a JVC-Onida colour TV sometime in the early ’80s, he was reluctant to get a video cassette recorder (VCR) since he and my mother were afraid that my sister and I would then end up spending too much time sitting in front of the TV. However, they relented after a few years and we did get a nice, sleek, Panasonic VCR sometime in the late ’80s, which then opened up a whole new world of movies for me. Only, now it wasn’t just Hindi movies, but also a whole host of English films – mostly action movies. Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky and Rambo. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan, Commando, Predator and Terminator. Tom Cruise’s Top Gun. Patrick Swayze’s Dirty Dancing and Point Break. John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever and Staying Alive. Chuck Norris’s Delta Force and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Bloodsport and Kickboxer. I’m sure there must have been some others as well, but these are the movies – cult classics of that time – I really loved.

Western filmmakers’ ‘language’ of filmmaking, both literally and figuratively, was completely different from the Hindi movies of that time – the plots, the pacing, the explosive action sequences was something one just didn’t get from Hindi movies. And speaking of action sequences, there was also Sharon Stone’s very memorable Basic Instinct, which I believe redefined the very experience of watching a movie for an entire generation of teenagers all over the world and probably elevated the VCR’s status to being the most valuable electronic gadget in the house. In Lucknow, there were dozens of video cassette libraries scattered across various residential and commercial areas across the city and while I don’t remember the exact amount, I think it cost five or ten rupees to rent a cassette for a day. Pirated movies were also widely circulated and these were often ‘camera prints’ with poor audio and video quality, so it was important to establish a good working relationship with the owner of your local video cassette library, which would ensure that he would source a ‘genuine’ movie print for you that had perfect picture quality.

I think my interest in going to movie theatres started declining with the coming of the VCR. As I got older, the popcorn and the samosa became a bit less important and the sheer convenience of watching movies from the comfort of the sofa in one’s own living room became ever harder to beat. Over the years, I moved from Lucknow to Bareilly from where I completed my post-graduation, Baroda, where I worked for more than a year and finally to Bombay, where I started my career in journalism in 1998. In fact, my interest in going to movie theatres was revived during my first few years in Bombay. During those years, my workplace was in the Fort area and then in Nariman Point, and there are many good movie halls in the vicinity. From 1998 to 2003 (which is when I got married), my colleagues from office and I would go out to watch a movie in the evening, after work. We’d catch the evening show and then go for a drink or three after watching the movie, followed by a quick dinner and then a dash to Churchgate or VT to catch a local train and go back home. We’d usually do this on Friday or Saturday evenings, but more occasionally weekdays were fair game as well. This was also the period that marked a sharp drop in my interest in watching Hindi movies, which I felt I could not relate to anymore. After Poonam and I got married, in 2003, we did go to movie theatres a few times but that gradually petered out and eventually we altogether stopped going out to watch movies. Apparently, Cheeni Kum, which came out in 2007, was the last movie we saw in a theatre! From 2007 to now, in 2024 – a period of 16-17 years – I haven’t watched more than maybe 5-7 Hindi movies, of which Piku, Vicky Donor, Moholla Assi and Gulabo Sitabo are some that I really liked.

Let me say here that I have absolutely nothing against Hindi films per se; it’s just that my own sensibilities have changed over the years and for the most part I simply don’t enjoy the kind of films that the Hindi film industry produces these days. I now enjoy watching some of the films that directors like Gulzar and Hrishikesh Mukherjee made in the 1970s-80s; the ‘tone’ and the ‘texture’ of those films just works for me, if you know what I mean. But those kinds of films are rarely, if ever, made these days. The filmmakers are not to blame, they are simply making what the audience wants, it’s me who’s not kept up with the changing times. Be that as it may, I’m happy to stick to my guns. In fact, I actually want to go back to the 1970s-80s and live in that time forever. 

Over the years, as my interests have changed and evolved, I have also discovered European films – French, German, Spanish and Italian movies, some of which are absolute masterpieces. Iranian movies as well, which are sometimes pretty good. But there’s nothing to beat the French when it comes to filmmaking. I don’t know what is it about the French – maybe it’s something in the wine they drink or in the baguette they eat – but French filmmakers can work wonders with plots that, at least on the face of it, seem very simple, very basic. But with some wonderful acting, excellent direction and outstanding lighting and camerawork, the French have truly elevated the art of filmmaking to levels where others haven’t reached yet. Hollywood? American filmmakers seem to have lost the plot in recent years and more often than not, don’t seem to understand what works and what doesn’t. The vast majority of American films being produced these days seem to be barely mediocre, or worse. The Americans may have some of the best filmmaking equipment – cameras, editing, SFX and post-production facilities – in the world, but the quality of their films have taken a nosedive since the early 2010s and a reversal of that trend doesn’t seem to be on the cards, at least for the near future.

Coming back to the way we watch films now, Poonam and I had bought a fairly large, 55-inch Toshiba LED TV in 2015 and for a few years, we quite enjoyed watching movies on that TV. However, as our tastes in movies kept diverging over the years, even the usage of that TV gradually declined to the point that when that TV finally died in 2023 (‘the motherboard is gone,’ said the Toshiba technician), we decided we won’t buy another TV because both of us felt we no longer need or want one. I mostly watch French movies (with English subtitles, of course) with some American films thrown in occasionally for good measure, and I watch those movies on my PC monitor at home. Poonam, who enjoys mainstream Hindi movies and web series, watches those on her Xiaomi tablet, which has a 3K display and a quad-speaker setup. She watches Netflix and Amazon Prime and has access to half a dozen OTT platforms, none of which I watch or have access to. Where do I get the films that I watch? Elsewhere, is all I can say ;-)    

Poonam still occasionally goes out to watch movies with her groups of friends – there are many good multiplexes in a 3km radius from where we live. My parents continue to go to the movies and in fact my father, to this day, says he simply doesn’t enjoy watching movies at home, on television. My son, who will soon be 17 years old, loves going to movie theatres with his group of friends and thinks nothing of spending close to a thousand rupees (including the ticket, plus snacks and Coke/Pepsi etc. bought inside the theatre) on just one such outing. Personally, I think it’s outrageous and a tremendous waste of money, but that’s just me, a dinosaur from the 1970s.

So, to each his or her own. Those who enjoy going to movie theatres for the experience will probably continue to do so and I’m happy for them. But movie theatres are no longer for me – I’m happy to watch movies at home and as for the popcorn, I have to admit I like caramel popcorn but I can live without it if that means I get to watch movies from the comfort of my own house, so there.