Rock On : Some layers and their meaning

Image courtesy: http://rockon.bigadda.com/cast-crew.html

ROCK ON: My part of the movie

Last night I watched ‘Rock On’, a Hindi film on life surrounding music, how music figures in and out, in different lives and different circumstances.

I loved the part of the movie where Joe, the lead guitarist’s and his wife’s life. I still feel she a had a reason to be displeased with his choice to go back and practice with the band, when he had an offer to do something that would bring up the family from the tight financial state and give a future for their son. His wife had made compromises for ten years and he still did not have a proper job and I feel it was his responsibility to take up the job, which she had laboriously arranged. She had good reason to go and talk to Aditya, who was in a well off state and had nothing to lose whether they got back as a band to play or not.

But the catch comes when Rob, who’s wish is to have a bang back as a band together, with his quickly deteriorating state due to fore brain tumour looms large. But what about ten years of Joe’s wife’s life? Where’s his responsibility, Dharma, purpose? Does it altogether meet at some point?

The movie has a thread regarding making compromises in life, running throughout the movie. Who can compromise? Whose compromise is valued? Does someone’s compromise matter in front of your desires? Does family come first or ambition? Some might say both can go hand in hand. The question, then, would be whose hands they are. Because unlike in movies, real life need not make circumstances coincide with each other so easily. Each one has his own situation and circumstance. Each one is in a place where He/she has been put in. It’s up to you to do your best in that circumstances, in such a way that your everyone is able to compromise on some things and hold on to some things. How much of each of that, is something there is no set answer to. That needs to be figured out by the human beings, who have equal rights, involved.

To complicate it further, one could try to find out where love fits in to this. Can love wipe away all the things lost by compromise? Can the compromise be overcome/ shadowed by love? What about years of compromise? So what, then, are relationships all about? Which makes the compromise? How much should /can/ must each partner compromise? Can they decide it in/through love? Really? Or do you just let life take over and let it flow? Do I sense apathy there?

The movie is multi-layered and each aspect could generate thousands of questions and that is what I like about it.