It's been showing in HK since September 1st but I dismissed it because of the name, "3 Idiots", convinced me it had be something along the lines of "Dumb and Dumber" or "Jackass"; films so far over my stupidity-tolerance level I wouldn't see them to save my own life.
However, despite a very slow start at the box office, "3 Idiots" has such great word-of-mouth it's built up in momentum and this past month it's been playing to packed houses all over HK and everyone's raving about it, so much so we finally surrendered ... and came away understanding why it has everyone talking: not just because it's a truly fabulous film but also because it's an important film here in HK since it directly addresses the torture imposed by our HK education systems, where it's all about exams-exams-exams and success or suicide are the only two options open to young folks.
And apparently this is the first film to ever address this issue here in Asia and, despite HK never before showing a Bollywood film, it's something everyone wants to see because it's finally dawning on everyone that education shouldn't be this way.
Did you know that as well as being the highest grossing film in Indian cinematic history, "3 Idiots" had the longest run in Taiwan of any film EVER, and I'm guessing that is because Taiwan too has the same type of education system as India and HK, where getting qualifications is more important than gaining knowledge.
And that, in a nutshell, is what the film is about: that getting an education should be about exploring and applying knowledge and NOT about this heavy-duty pressure to pass exams, like it is all over Asia.
The story? It's a Bollywood film set in a university, and is the classic tale of two studious types, Raju and Farhan, meeting up with a wild Dionysian genius-type fellow student, Rancho, who bucks the system, gets them into trouble and makes them confront their fears and explore who they are and who they really want to be and thus they grow and become better and more courageous people from knowing him ... but then, once they get their degrees, Rancho vanishes. "Who was that masked man?"
And so this is a film is set ten years later when Raju and Farhan - along with their arch enemy The Silencer - set out on a road-trip across India to find Rancho, with the university story about why Rancho was so important to them being told in flashback. (Normally I detest flashback, but here it really works.)
Yeah, I know. We've all heard this tale many many times before, but here it's fresh and exciting and just beautiful to watch ... because of the Bollywood angle.
Let me show you just one little bit so you get what I mean:
Isn't it marvelous. That's the theme of the film: that when your life is out of control, reassure your heart that all is well - "aal iz well" - because it doesn't know the difference and keeps beating strongly and you can then behave courageously and do anything. Yeah, good one!
All though, I kept thinking that it was the Bollywood tradition of bursting into song at critical emotional points that stopped this film from becoming bogged down in the grim mire of the seriously dark subject matter and that nothing less than a Bollywood film could have successfully told this story.
Like, let me show you another song, this one dealing with Raju's suicide attempt:
The entire suicide aftermath done in three ultimately joyous minutes? So Bollywood: so beautiful! I'm convinced that any other way of storytelling here would not have worked.
And I have to say in this film India looks amazing, so much so that I'd put money on a lot of the funding coming from India Tourism.
Oh, and it doesn't hurt that there's a beautiful love story tucked in there as well. with Rancho falling in love with Pia, the youngest daughter of their evil professor - nicknamed Virus - and their subplot is so cute and so touching that when Raju and Farhan steal Pia away from her own wedding to come with them to find Rancho, you want to cheer out loud. Ooooh, let me show you a little of their love story:
Cute, huh!
And how odd is it that Pia looks so much like Cuddy from "House". In fact, the resemblance is so striking they should bring the actress onto "House" to play Cuddy's long-lost secret Indian love-child. Or, at the very least, a doctor who everyone thinks is Cuddy's long-lost secret Indian love-child
And I want to say that again: only a Bollywood film could have told this story so successfully; any other genre and the pressure those students were suffering through, and all the subsequent suicides (in HK if a significant proportion of your students don't suicide, you're obviously not working them hard enough), would have created a story so grim it would have been Bergman-esque and unbearable.
So that's "3 Idiots": less an Indian "Dumb and Dumber" and more an important film that has a message that needs to be heard right across Asia, and which is being told in the exact best genre for the story, and I predict that if it ever gets past the Mainland Chinese censors, it's going to achieve huge success once it gets shown in China because, from all accounts, China needs it too.
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