It’s been one of my parenting dreams, to enjoy a good movie
with Jispa. Jispa’s and my taste in movies don’t exactly match. But it’s
getting there. Till a long period of time she was stuck in feel good animation.
Slowly she moved on to the Avengers kind of stories and I think she even
watched a few X- men series. But there was hardly anything that I could be
really happy with. Once long before I watched Gandhi with her. She was still
pretty small at the time. I think she was hardly 8 years old. I think I have
blogged about it. At the end she was in tears as Gandhi was shot and she
famously asked – “The British did not kill Gandhi? We Indians only killed him?”
Epic moment in growing up.
So every time at Abbas Library where we borrow the movies,
Jispa and me have an epic fight. Which movie to see. She ends up seeing movies I
hate. I hate sweet cute movies meant for ‘family’ and that I get so worked up
over. And I am done with animation movies. I have seen so many that I hardly
can tolerate any new ones. The really fresh animation content aka Kung Fu panda
is hard to come by anymore. So we always spend a long time at the library
trying to get this right. most of the time we end up taking either her movie or
my movie in which case she is not interested / permitted to see it. Hardly any
properly family movie that the family enjoys.
Just this weekend – I saw ‘Saving Mr Banks’ on the library
display. An Oscar kind of movie? Would Jispa really enjoy it? But then it’s
produced by Disney and has the ‘Disney’ label on it. It is possibly quite an
interesting one. So we took it home and we began watching it at night. Jasmine
reminds me of my dad. Whenever a movie starts my dad would simply go to sleep.
Jasmine too just dozes of through the movies. She is just too tired to watch a
movie at night. And I guess the TV screen gives out some relaxing signals as
well. I guess if we are forced to sit in one place and free our minds – they simply
just doze off. I remember my Yoga classes.
But then Jispa and I were watching this movie and we were commenting
on it. The movie is about how Disney broke their head with the Author of Mary
Poppins while trying to get the script and screen play right for the movie. Of
course I am assuming that only a genesis of the idea is real with a lot of
fiction thrown in for making it an engaging screen play. But forget all those
inanities. Just watch the movie for the amazing characters. Especially that of
the author PL Travers. Emma does a wonderful job with her uptight English portrayal
and her amazing use of English to spew acerbic around her. Jispa and I were so
much in love with her character. In sharp contrast was Walt Disney. Full of
life, American capitalist spreading joy in the world, for unashamed gains. And
then you contrast with her flashback, where she sees her fun dad succumb to alcohol.
I loved the movie and so did Jispa.
We discussed it for some time and we both enjoyed it when in
the flash back, her Aunt (the Mary Poppins inspiration) comes to her home.
Afterwards while we were discussing the movie, I spoke to
Jispa about my views on alcohol. I explained that I don’t see anything hugely
wrong in drinking. Nopes, it’s not necessarily a bad thing but then there are
other ramifications to it. I explained what my dad used to say. Drinking a
glass is not bad. The problem is that it doesn’t stop there. That’s when it gets bad. I explained that
when we go on a holiday, I go so that we spend time with each other. I see
families where the dad sits at the table with his drink, while the family looks
on. Sure he enjoys his beer, but I see that as time that I waste away from my
family. I want to spend time with Jispa and Jasmine and why should I drink in
that time. Plus she also saw the ill effects in the movie from drinking.
That was my chat about drinking to her. Drinking smoking etc
are difficult topics to talk about. When Jispa gets older it’s going to be her
choice on what she wants to do. I would surely not like her to start this when
she is younger than 18. But its not like they really will tell you when they
start. That’s my problem. I don’t like it but I don’t really want to oppose it.
My views are my views. They remain my views, I don’t want to impose them but I would
surely like to them to influence towards a choice to be made. I just think that
the choice is not favorably loaded on your side. So that’s that!
But it still was a lovely movie and I loved watching it with
Jispa.
Bonus song : what else chim chimeree from Mary Poppins. It was
very nicely used in this movie.
Also the final song which served as the ultimate redemption
