In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones

It happen sometimes that you stumble upon something, and are totally bowled over by it. Yesterday when I was wandering in the midst of the blabber-land rightly called Web, I felt the same. What took my fancy was an age old TV Film, aired on DD some 20 years back. The strange title 'In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones', was enough to grab my attention and the fact that it stars Arundhati Roy only helped increase my curiosity.

Some more googles, and I was surprised to read a very familiar name 'SRK' in the starcast. Though SRK should be the last person to be mentioned here, he did give me a reason to watch the movie. Since the movie got aired only once on Doordarshan, that too during a late night slot some 20 years back, it was quite difficult to get its copy . The fact that the movie was never released on CD/DVD and that the archives of Doordarshan have always been a state of art (Pun intended !) didn't helped either.

Finally after failing to get the movie elsewhere I tried Youtube and bingo I got it. Some body had actually took the pains of recording the movie twenty years back, saving the recording till the arrival of digital age, encoding it in digital format and then finally uploading it on Youtube for the future generations to savor a masterpiece.




The movie is plotted around an Architecture School, loosely based on School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), Delhi. This explains Arundhati Roy's involvement, since Roy is a graduate from SPA herself, she also happens to be the script writer for the movie.

The film must be appreciated for being one of the most honest attempts at capturing student life back in 80's. The portrayal of a somewhat eccentric student by Roy is certainly a delight to the viewer, she is a natural actor and the ease with which she puts her point forward is amazing. Probably, the fact that she was portraying someone like herself did helped her though. I wonder why she did not pursue acting rather than supporting Maoist violence and attracting the ire of the nation.

The film shows a fifth year student from past four years, Annie, making another attempt to graduate from the college. He is supported by his friends who themselves are quite nervous about their final year project submission. All of them struggling towards the completion of their projects, working late nights, contemplating to fool the jury and aiming to pass and get the hell out of college.

Its hard to categorize this movie into any genre, a satirical comedy being one of them. What a pity that something like this which definitely deserves a cult-stature, remains unknown to the majority of movie lovers in India. Ironically, this movie was made when there was a huge dearth of good cinema in India (not that it exists even now to some extent).

Watch this movie. Though I would suggest not to raise your expectations from the movie since I tend to like this kind of cinema more than a person with a healthy mind would ever do.

Regards,
khukii