Climbing into bed well after 2:00 AM leaves little incentive to hop out of bed bright and early the next morning! Instead we slept in a bit, ate a hardy buffet breakfast in the Park Hotel lobby restaurant, spent much of the morning "catching up" on lots of little chores, then set out in the early afternoon for a visit to Landmark, a highly regarded Chennai bookstore nearby. We even managed to cross a busy street to get there!
So much good literature is written by Indian authors in English that we spent quite some time browsing through the well-stocked store, purchasing (despite the weight involved) some reading material that caught our attention along the way. We then hopped aboard one of Chennai's ubiquitous little yellow tuk-tuks and, for about the equivalent of ninety cents (40 rupees), made our way to the Sathyam Cinema complex for an afternoon showing of ENTHIRAN, a Tollywood film released to great acclaim hereabouts four weeks ago.
Coming on this trip to India in 2010, Lee had three specific "bucket list" objectives in mind that he hoped might be fulfilled this time around. He wanted to attend an Indian wedding (accomplished), witness a monsoon rain (ditto, in spades!) and attend a Bollywood film with an Indian audience.
ENTHIRAN (ROBOT), because its in Tamil rather than Hindi, is technically not "Bollywood" but rather "Tollywood" -- other film centers in India have adopted similar local place names that refer to their specialized (usually language-centered) offerings.
Technicalities aside, ENTHIRAN turned out to be one heck of an enjoyable movie as did the experience of seeing it with a large Indian audience! The film has become an enormous success with over one thousand prints in circulation all around the world. It appears on its way to being the highest grossing film in Indian movie history. Although we saw it without subtitles, that hardly mattered - the plot, while absorbing and complex (the film ran around three hours), was easy to follow and generally quite straightforward. And, man, did it entertain the audience, us included: lots of singing and dancing, action sequences of amazing ingenuity, a villain to hiss and a gorgeous leading lady to whistle at, humor galore and such a hectic pace that even Heidi stayed awake (rather than falling asleep as she usually does when confronted by "too much action").
The theater was HUGE and quite full, considering the mid-afternoon show time and that the film has been out nearly a month by now. The first several rows (the "cheap seats") were wooden, but the rest were high-back and very comfortable reserved seats. The concession stand stocked all the usual goodies. The enormous screen was slightly curved; the images, sharp and clear with a stupendous sound system that really rocked the house. Lee was especially taken by the overhead lighting which resembled jelly fish without those long tentacles dangling down.
We were even mesmerized by the pre-screening ads! Advertisers (lots of jewelry and sari commercials) obviously can count on reaching lots of potential customers, so they put lots into making their ads as entertaining as possible; and it really made them fun to watch.
Another cool aspect of the movie for us was that it was filmed here in Chennai. And even though we have been here less than a day, we recognized the lobby of our hotel in one scene and a circular overpass we drove around on our way into town from the airport in another!
We must have been a bit dazed when we exited the theater, because we ended up being taken (again by tuk-tuk) to the wrong hotel while trying to return to the Park Hotel, Chennai (we ended up instead at the Park Hotel, Sheraton ...). Eventually we got home, had a tasty Thai dinner at a restaurant in the hotel, met briefly with our Overseas Adventure Travel local guide, then retreated to our room for (hopefully) a good night's sleep.
... with Tollywood dance routines alive in our heads!
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