Back in class 10, when I heard the actual context of these lines while listening to my teacher read Julius Caesar, I realised the cinematic potential these lines carried. “Et tu, Brute, then fall Caesar”, wrote Shakespeare and shook the very foundation of my understanding of theatre and writing.
The emotions that one would have to display while performing something like this still intrigues me. Every now and then when I think about it, I keep eliminating actors that could possibly come close to delivering at least half the emotion that actually lies behind these mere words. Shakespeare’s expertise to write a dynamic display of emotions in just three words exceeds his unrealistic expectations from his actors to deliver it.
But the ability to blow minds of audiences by creating unforgettable cinematic experiences certainly is not limited to the 23 stab wounds on Caesar. We all have watched movies that we loved, cried over, related to, or just remembered, amongst all these experiences were lines that we held on to or took inspiration from or simply liked.
Some such great lines became milestones in cinematic history. Not just that, they surpassed the boundaries of time and that’s how we got, ‘evergreen’.
Dead Poets Society
Robin Williams had all of us huddled up in the ‘Dead Poets Society’ classroom to hear John Keating whisper the greater truths of life and so said he, “medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for”.
Somethings can be appreciated out of context and some feel bizarre that way, some need to be dug deep, while some flow with the subtlety of words, but when you encounter something like this very movie, you tend to appreciate the slightest of whispers that touched you to the very core.
Pursuit of Happyness
Unfortunately, as much mystical the world of poetry is, the reality is just as harsh and brutal. So we lived the life of Chris Gardener through Will Smith and when at last after stupidity, interning, paying taxes and a lot more when he finally said, “and this part of my life, this very part, is called happiness”, the goddess of immortality too shed a tear and thus generations will live with Chris Gardener’s struggles and his ‘Pursuit of Happyness’.
The Kite Runner
“For you, a thousand times over”, sometimes, way beyond appreciation, somethings, leave us……in peaceful silence. Words just don’t seem enough to express. There could never have been a better way for Khaled Hosseini to cause this massive hushing down of minds into a silence, serene and peaceful.
Although the cinematic experience of the same might not have been something similar, nevertheless, the writer successfully through the nib of the mightier sword carved this into eternity.
The Pirates of the Caribbean
Then this one is somewhere between grotesque and beautiful and apparently it is possible to achieve that, but only in the grotesque world of the beautiful Jack Sparrow. ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’ series comes down to being an excellent book of life quotes.
Captain Jack Sparrow had an interesting amount of rum in his veins and wisdom in his brain and in between flattery and comedy, he let us glimpse into his world of wisdom, although the peek through this curtain gives a hell lot of evergreen lines but let us sum it up with, “This is the day you will always remember as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow.”
The point being, cinematic experiences last more than the 2 hours of the movie. We bring home empty wallets in our bags, bits of popcorn in our teeth, but most importantly we bring home experiences worth a whole life that we lived through the roller coaster ride of those 2 hours.
We bring home lessons learnt through situations we could have never experienced: like the search of new planets, inter-dimensional communication, or hopelessly romantic affairs.
Every experience is personal but shared through evergreen dialogues and scenes, we wish we could keep them for ourselves like the last piece of cake, hidden and only for us to savour or share them with everyone to enjoy like the little joys of life.
