The Graduate......once again !!!!

Back home late from work yesterday night, I just decided to flip through the channels of TV & managed to watch a movie……could not get the title as I connected slightly late. The movie was intriguing enough to hold my attention, as the story line was just bizarre.
Set in the American backdrop of late 90’s, it was about a girl, Sarah (Jennifer Aniston), a reporter by profession who is engaged to this handsome young man. Both so much in love that they cannot stay apart & are travelling together to attend the marriage of her younger daughter. It looked a simple romantic movie till now, with touches of cheeky comedy. But it turned turtle after that into a most unbelievable plot. A quirky connection to a blockbuster movie of yesteryears, ‘The Graduate’, (Dustin Hoffman’s debut as the central role), just got the ball rolling. 'The Graduate' was a major hit, where Dustin Hoffman, fresh out of college, gets involved with an elderly lady, Anne Bancroft(Mrs Robinson) & lands up in bed with her. However, later he realizes that his love lies with another girl (Anne Bancroft’s step daughter), & he manages to run away with her after some comical twists to the tale. Simon &Garfunkel had given some immortal music score in the movie, one of them being ‘Mrs Robinson’.
Pulling ahead from ‘The Graduate’, in this movie, Sarah meets her grandmother(supposedly Mrs Robinson’s character) & gets to know that her mother had gone off with another man a month before her marriage. A man with whom her grandmother had an affair which led them to having sex. With her mind working up many disturbing questions, Sarah decides to go looking for this mysterious man,(thinking he might be her real father) who turns out to be an extremely rich vagabond (played by Kevin Costner). Sarah gets charmed by Mr Charming Vagabond & ends up in bed with him, not knowing where she is headed to. She has ended up in bed with a man who had earlier slept with her mother & her grandmother…whew!!!...some storyline!!!!.....very confusing........complicated & utterly unbelievable.
Sarah’s loyal boyfriend, is completely outraged & cannot accept such betrayal, & decides to end the relationship (what else can you expect). He interestingly still gives Sarah one last chance to forgive & forget, by marrying him immediately, but she is too confused to respond…..quite understandable, given the series of events that she has gone through. However, Sarah comes back to him after some more emotional melodrama at her home, understanding finally where her real love is, & he too accepts her back & the movie ends in a happy note with their marriage!!!! Jennifer Aniston was superb in the twists of emotions, as an actor, & so was her flummoxed boyfriend(cannot place who the actor was).

It took me time to digest the bizarre storyline movie & I kept thinking till quite late. My mind immediately went back to the popular English tele serials of the early 90’s like ‘Santa Barbara’ where characters had multiple layers of emotions & intricacies,……characters getting in & out of relations, just like we change clothes, with a series of justifications, however inexplicable it may seem. Those days too, I was at my wits end to understand how such things could happen, & would always end up blaming the script writer for the storyline. However, we have seen traces of same twists & turns in our own “Saas bhi kabhi Bahu thi’, with people, especially women glued to the TV, lapping up the morbid saga of ‘Emotional Atyachar’.
Is this where culture & morals are heading to??? Is this what we are adapting & emoting from West???? Indian culture is witnessing the darker effects of the Wild West. The basic fabric of our society is pushing towards bankruptcy, in terms of relations. Marriages are becoming farcical & relations are getting strained by the day. Are we going back in time zones to jungle days, where what mattered was pure survival, without a trace of worry for others. Life today seems too fast paced with materialistic needs overtaking the moral values.
Time to think & introspect. Time to get back to our roots.