The Revenant
As a regular Filmhouse fan, I come across a number of similarly motivated fans. Inevitably the recognition nod often gives rise to an exchange of greetings or expressions of contentment or disappointment over the film experience one had just shared. Thus it was that I struck an acquaintanceship with John. As he was of obvious Indian background, I was surprised that he was called John.
Even if we met in the lobby before a show, and exchanged greetings, we never sat together. He always made for the front row and I, whenever possible, the third or fourth one. Like me he preferred to watch his films on his own. We’d meet again after the show and would walk together. It was on the way home that most of the conversations I’ve had with him took place. At Tollcross he would cross over to the other side whilst I kept going. He must have told me where he lived, but I never understood. My hearing problems and his thick accent combined were no doubt equally to blame.
Over the months that I knew John, I discovered his taste in films. I think his all-time favourite was the Japanese film Ugetsu Monogatari. I had never heard of it, I said. Mizoguchi, he said. I had no idea what he meant and when I got home I checked it on-line. It was a film set in Japan a few centuries ago, consisting of nine supernatural tales, including one in which a character having left his wife in their village to seek his fortune in the city returns home a few years later, to be royally treated by the wife who had laid down a feast for him. When he woke up next morning, it was all desolation. It turned out that the poor woman had died a wretched death after being abandoned. He often talked about that film and once said, “I am not going home before I see it one last time.” That was the first time he mentioned about leaving.
One day after a show I asked John if he wished to come home with me for a meal, and he invented a pretext, and when I did it a second time, I realised that he wanted no more contact with me than our short post-viewing exchanges. Being retired, I usually go to matinées which are cheaper, and was surprised that he, who was considerably younger than me had the same habit. I wondered about his job and asked him one day and he mumbled something about “the office”, without elaborating.
I remember meeting him after a showing of Leonardo di Caprio’s film The Revenant, and he seemed really disappointed. I thought it was a competently made film about how the real-life character Hugh Glass a fur trapper was left for dead by his associates after being mauled by a bear, but managed to survive in the frozen wastes. John said that he thought a revenant was someone who came back from real death. To me that was not a serious impediment to the worth of the production.
I mentioned the French series Les Revenants which I had seen on TV, about a village in a snowbound French village seeing the return of their children who were long thought to have died in an accident. John’s face lit up. Yes, that’s the film he wished to see. But I do not have a TV set, he said. I offered to get the disc and asked if he would like to come watch it at my place, and he shook his head without explaining. I was annoyed when he kept saying that he really wished to see that series. Why did he not take me up on my offer. One day out of the blue he said that films needed to be watched in a cinema. He hated television.
I realised over the next few months that his favourite films were of a theme: Blithe Spirit, The Ghost Goes West, Dead of Night, Kwaidan, Field of Dreams, Woman in Black, Madhumati, the latter a Bollywood offering I had seen in Mauritius as a child, in which (the character played by) Dilip Kumar falls in love with Vijayantimala. It is an impossible love and cannot prosper, but after they die everything turns out like a field of roses as they meet again in the afterlife and “live” happily. The pattern was obvious. I understood why the Japanese film meant so much to him.
He was absolutely thrilled one day when he greeted me outside the ticket counter and showed me the Filmhouse brochure. His excitement was about a Mizoguchi Retrospective coming to the Filmhouse next month. I shared his enthusiasm as he had certainly won me over to the cause. When the time came, I said that I planned to go see Ugetsu Monogatari on the Wednesday, and he said so would he. I wondered if we might sit together this time.
When I arrived at the cinema, I thought that I might see him outside, but it turned out that he was already inside. When I went in I sat in the third row and noticed his shiny pate in front. I was absorbed by the film and readily agreed with my Indian friend’s view that it was a masterpiece of the cinema. I was therefore looking forward to our little talk on our way home. We met at the exit and he nodded happily. Now I can go home, he said happily. As we walked towards the front door, and were passing the toilets, he made a sign that he was going to ease himself. Naturally I waited for him outside.
He did not come out after five minutes but I waited some more. He never came out. I was surprised because as far as I knew there was only one entrance, but I thought that with with all the toing and froing it was easy to miss someone. So I went home on my own. I’ll see John next time, I thought.
But I never did, he had gone home.
