Saturday, December 25, 2010

Fascination with tragic endings

Today I saw one of my all time favourite movie, Qayamat se Qayamat tak aka QSQT, which made me wonder why tragic endings in movies are such a huge hit with the audience. As per the information on QSQT goes, it is said that the director of the film, Mansoor Khan had two endings for the film, a happy ending meant for the older audience and the tragic ending(ultimately adapted in the film) for the younger audience. I remember when I was in college, my English language lecturer discussing the ending of this film. He said that the film would not have been such a huge success if the ending was a happy one. I'm not sure of this but, yes, every time I see Aamir Khan hugging Juhi Chawla and piercing the knife into his gut it makes me want to bawl my heart out. So what is this fascination about tragic endings. Other films with tragic climax that I know of are Ek Duje Ke Liye, Kites, Gangster. Little bit of googling gave me other results like Heer Ranjha, Laila Majnu, Soni Mahiwal. One of my other favourite movie is a Kannada film called Mungaru Male(MM). The ending of this film is unique. Most of the film ends with

a) Hero heroine marrying each other(All is Well ending ).

b) Heroine is forced to marry someone else and goes in search of her love only to find that she is in love with her husband(what a waste of time, energy n money).

c) Hero heroine dies and unite in heaven (or hell??)

But MM is different where hero(Ganesh) sacrifices his love and the heroine marries someone else and life just goes on.. Hmmmm.. sounds different but familiar, maybe because this is a case of reel emulating real life. In fact I was playing around with the story of the sequel to MM. In the sequel I am going to make a girl fall in love with Ganesh and everything turns out to be fine. Just kidding but hey, this actually reminds me of another fabulous movie Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, where the director wanted to end the movie on a positive note. Hence the guest acting by Juhi Chawla for exactly 2 minutes in the ending. Maybe people want movies to end happily because movies were never meant to emulate real life. But personally if you ask me, I prefer a tear-jerker tragic ending to a 'and-they-lived-happily-forever' climax. Maybe this would make the story more believable or maybe I am just too much of a pessimist. :)

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