Musings

A film

The first time I heard about the film "Seabiscuit" was after the Melbourne test in the Indian tour of Australia' 2003-04. Virender Sehwag had blasted 195 runs in the first innings of the test (though it was for a losing cause as Ponting was able to do better) and he had claimed that watching "Seabiscuit" on Dravid's suggestion had helped him with the innings. I thought it to be stupid that a person of his calibre would be inspired by a mere film - I have enjoyed a lot of films (none more so that the matrix) but never considered one to be inspirational. Its just that I cannot believe one could be inspired by anything other than himself - exceptions do occur but its the natual law....a law well forgotten by me.

So, after a while the film was continuously shown in television (I am not even sure if it got released in India) but I simply couldn't see it for a variety of reasons. Most of the times the reason would be the fact that I would have started seeing the film halway thought and I am too lazy to see such a film on the trot in TV. The silly breaks always annoy me and more often I switch channels never to return to this. So - finally a day came happened one day that I began to see the film from the beginning. I was glued to it - till the minute Seabiscuit took the lead in his match against "War Admiral". I knew at that instant that I was in love with the film - yes "LOVE". I had to realise after a whole minute that I was watching with my mouth wide open and probably as much. I watched the film completely.

So, the next time the film was shown, I made it a point to watch it from start to the end. I was hoping against hope that the film would be enjoyable as much as the first time I watched it. This time in the race with "War Admiral" I realised that the jockey (George Woolf rode the horse for this race since Pollard was injured), actally says "So long" before speeding through the last corner. I enjoyed it n times more than my first time.

I have never seen the film completely again. I have watched bits and pieces of the film whenever the film was shown on TV (and that's a lot of times) but was unable to see it completely. My room mates also got the fact that I am seeing the film like crazy and had to endure their taunts as well. So after finally managing to borrow enough time on the TV one day to watch the "Seabiscuit Vs. War Admiral" race one last time, I decided to buy the DVD. I had to spend some Rs. 500 odd for this DVD (a couple of months ago)  but I didn't complain - I knew I will see it enough times to enjoy it.

Since then, I have read through the wiki page of Seabiscuit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) a lot of times and everytime I read through them I get the same goosebumps. One film!!!

P.S : I haven't opened the DVD case yet. I am not sure why but it still remains in the same place I dropped it the day I bought it... 

1 Comments