This Friendship Day, let us take a look at five good movies from both Hollywood and Bollywood that are either rooted in friendship or explore it in some way.
Friendship is perhaps the purest of relationships. How unbelievable it is that we build an everlasting bond with somebody with whom we are not related by blood? Regardless of our upbringing, it is our friends who shape the person we become. It is with friends we are at our most frank, most at ease. With friends, we share the secrets that we would not tell anybody, not even lovers. This Friendship Day, let us take a look at five good movies from both Hollywood and Bollywood that are either rooted in friendship or explore it in some way.
The Shawshank Redemption
This Frank Darabont film explores many themes like hope and freedom, but it is the friendship between Andy and Red that forms the backbone of the story. Two inmates of a New England prison develop a companionship and survive the harsh treatment meted out by the authorities by seeking solace in each other’s company.
Winnie the Pooh
Disney’s Winnie the Pooh franchise is getting a live-action spinoff this month, but in the meanwhile, you can watch this animated modern classic that released in 2011. It has all the magic of AA Milne’s stories that you read in your childhood. The naive, childish wisdom imparted by Pooh and the innocent friendship between Pooh and Christopher Robin remains a stuff of legend.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
There are few filmmakers working today who can even come close to Steven Spielberg, whether it comes to technical brilliance or a vice-like grip on human emotion. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a tale of friendship between a kid and an alien who is stranded on earth after the others of his kind flee the earth in haste.
Sholay
Probably one of the most iconic Bollywood movies ever, Sholay has two likeable scoundrels being partners in crime, literally. And isn’t that why friends are for, really?
Anand
It is said that your friends are your best teachers. If that is true, then Amitabh Bachchan’s Dr Bhaskar Banerjee had the best teacher in Rajesh Khanna’s Anand Sehgal, a cheerful, happy-go-lucky man who can make even the dourest of people smile with his antics. Anand does not let the fact that he has cancer and has at best a few months to live to come in the way of his exuberance. As he explains to Bhaskar, “Babumoshai, zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahin.” Indeed.