One of the hallmarks of a great piece of art is that the more experiences you go through in your personal life, the more that the piece of art reveals different meanings to you. One such movie that is like that for me personally is 3 idiots. It is one of the few movies that I have seen at least 10 times. Every so often, I'll come back to this movie to remind myself of the lessons the movie pushes.
A Story of Friendship
I've mentioned this before, but I believe that the only reason we come back to a particular piece of work is a good story. Good story is driven by lovable character. What draws me back to these three characters so often is their incredible bond of friendship. In particular, Rancho shows the other two what a true friend looks like.
Rancho is always looking out for his friends. He genuinely wants them to succeed in any and every way possible. He is there to support them through this journey. He puts his friends above all else. When you see Raju allow his financial situation and his need to get good grades get in the way of this friendship, Rancho doesn't give up. He sticks with his friend and tries to show him that the path he is taking is not one that will lead to success in the end. Despite that, Raju sticks with his new roommate.
Some time goes by and Raju's dad falls ill and needs to be rushed to the hospital. Rancho gets a phonecall from someone informing him of the situation (most likely from Farhan). Since he is already out, he quickly races to Raju's house and is able to quickly rush Raju's father to the hospital before Raju even makes it home. A true friend is always there for you. No matter what happens. Raju gets the hospital and is initially angry with Rancho for bringing his dad in a moped but when he hears the doctors talk about how he had just made it his heart melts and asks Rancho for forgiveness. This is truly a heart-melting moment. But what happens next is an even more powerful lesson in friendship.
All this is happening the day before one of their big exams. Rancho's girlfriend, a doctor, tells the guys to get back to the university so they can sleep and take the exam. Rancho says, they're not going anywhere until Raju's father is feeling better. The three friends spend all night in the hospital in order to be there for their friend's father the night before a big exam. You just don't see friendships like that in the real world. Perhaps that's why this movie hits me so deep. It would be so incredible to have a friend like Rancho.
Social Commentary
This movie was made in India with the target audience being the Indian people. Particularly the Indian educated class. The good thing about Indian movies is that they don't try to be subtle with their messages. They are very in your face about what the movie is trying to portray. What the message is will be clearly articulated throughout the film numerous times. There are many films nowadays coming out of bollywood that don't have any message whatsoever, but the ones that do are very clear with what the message is.
The main lesson this movie is trying to impart to the youth of the nation is that don't get caught up in the race to be first. Don't learn just to earn. Don't fill your head with information that you have no passion for. Let your passion fuel what you learn. Don't learn to get a nice job, learn so that you have a good understanding of the subject matter. Learn so that you can use what you learned in the real world. Excellence, and as a result success, comes from learning what you love.
In the film, there is one suicide that is successful and another one that is attempted due to the stress of trying to be successful at the university. One of the lines that always stuck with me about this scene is how Rancho says that no one here talks about new ideas or what they can do with the knowledge they're learning. All they talk about is grades and getting a job in America. When you have an entire nation thinking like this, you don't get any progress. All you get is people stressed about getting good grades. When your sole purpose is to get good grades and get a job, life gets very stressful because teachers generally grade on a curve. There are only so many top spots that you can give. If you shift the narrative and get a generation that is focused on making the world a better place, however, you can have an entire generation that is motivated and does good work. The opportunities to do good work with your knowledge are infinite, but grades and certain jobs over sees are finite.
This movie speaks to this very prominent problem in India where people are so stressed over their grades that they feel like they have no way out other than suicide. Ironically, even though the movie is strictly messaging against this concept, the suicide rates in Inida actually shot up after the release of this film. Perhaps people that were not even thinking about suicide yet but felt trapped saw this movie and saw suicide as a way out.
What 3 idiots does is reframe what success means for a generation. The impact this movie has had not just in india but around the world is remarkable. You see the two competing ideas of what success looks like at the end. Turns out Rancho wasn't even the character's real name. He was studying with that name so someone else could get the degree. The man was studying this whole time purely to become a more learned, capable man. On the other hand you have silencer whose idea of success is a nice, big house, a ferrari, and a high paying job. In the end, the more valuable person in the world ends up being Rancho. Driven by his love for engineering, he keeps exploring and finding new ideas. He has hundreds of patents and giant corporations around the world are willing to give anything to collaborate with him.