Life, Rock and Roll and a Movie



There are great movies, classics and then there are personal favorites. I have my own list of personal favorites, of them some are not commercially or critically successful. For instance, I don't think there can be a movie that's better than Monster's Ball. In this list, I have recently added Almost Famous. I am not sure if it was a hit or won any awards other than a couple of Golden Globes. But I simply fell in love for a lot of reasons. Like, this movie

* is about 60s America, my favorite period
* is about Rock and Roll, my favorite music
* is a semi-road flick, my favorite theme again. I don't remember a single road movie that I have not liked
* is about a teen-journalist traveling with a rock band to write a cover for Rolling Stone
* is full of clippings from Simon & Garfunkel to Ozzy to The Who. Boy, can't ask for more!

Above all these, this movie is fun yet very sensitively treated and on certain layers, talks about insecurities of a society in transformation. The sixtees America was arguably one of the most rapidly changing societies and such change was wrought with insecurities at various strata. This movie subtly deals with many of them, from parenthood to love to friendship, quite mockingly at times. There are even very existentialistic tones on what is a 'real' society from the point of a pot-induced psychedelic one. There's this line where a lead-singer from the band Stillwater says 'Rock and Roll can save the world!'. How true!