Wake-Up Sid: A comforting companion in the crushing journey of finding myself!
I can easily classify watching movies and writing random stuff in notebooks & behind DVD covers as my favorite pastime during my childhood. I can’t recall doing any other activity that gave me even an ounce of the dopamine, supplied to me by watching and writing.
As a teenager, I was always hooked by the larger-than-life film culture of Bollywood and the biggest commercial superstars of Bollywood were my favorite heroes. My teenage years were in sync with, what can be said to be one of the most successful and celebrated eras of Bollywood, in the recent past.
This was the time when Bollywood was ruled by the ‘3 Khans’, Akshay Kumar was known as ‘Khiladi’ for his flexible body, Shahid Kapoor was still the chocolate boy and Bollywood was making good comedy movies like Dhamaal and Golmaal.
These movies with grandeur portrayals of heroes were good & quite entertaining for the kid me, but as I grew up & got exposed to stories of Hollywood & a few here & there well-scripted movies from Bollywood, my screen time preferences & expectations from the cinema starting changing. Pair it with the competition culture and the complexities a growing teen has to go through, in a race towards a good future, I lost my attachments to the same movies that I dearly used to enjoy a few years back.
Seeing the heroes enjoying all the material things & soulful connections in their lives, which I thought were the pinnacle of success for a person, but without the struggles that an ordinary person has to go through to taste a better future, I became envious of them. I became very selective of the movies that I chose to watch. I stopped liking the typical commercial movies without any storyline, characters, screenplay, or acting. Most of them were ruled out just by looking at the name of the movie, its banner, its actors, and its director. Very few ended up on my watch list.
During my college time, when I was cut off from the cinema world and was deeply into harder times, mentally, physically & academically, when aimlessly scrolling through social media was the only thing I was good at & when having no aim in life was eating me from the inside, I came across a few very comforting clips of a movie which I had disregarded and skipped plenty times during my childhood, just because It was just too bland, or boring for me. It was WAKE-UP, SID.
I quickly downloaded the movie & gave it another chance. And this time around, it felt different! I was feeling all types of emotions for the movie and just that feeling of seeing a heroic character going through the same struggles of life that I was prone to, It felt relatable. The warmth of seeing another person experiencing the same hardships I was going through and seeing him eventually win in life was touching. The screenplay, writing & portrayal of characters were so simple yet beautiful that I related to each & every bit of it. Siddharth’s wins felt personal, seeing him grow from being an aimless man-child to a mature man filled with hope & anticipation for the future, I could see myself in that character, I was relating to it. I felt like I could have what he’s having.
Wake Up Sid is a movie that has evolved into being one of my utmost favorite classics, coming from Bollywood. Over time, I have somehow resonated with each & every part of it. It lets you experience real-life Incidents from behind a lens, showcasing the journey of going from “the carefree breezy nightlife of a young man” to seeing him accomplish greater things in Life.
This movie is like a digital companion for every youth that ever felt lackluster, aimless, sans direction like little boats tossed about on careless seas. It is filled with nostalgia for the bygone childhood and adolescence, but also equally filled with hope and anticipation for the future. The young characters, Aisha & Sid are Imperfect, fallible & their coming-of-age journeys are very much relatable.
The character of Sid is just like many of us. A confused Gen Z in their late teens with his omnipresent reluctance to grow up. Siddharth Mehra is a spoiled brat, who enjoys his father’s lavish income. He is lazy, Immature, and does not care for anything besides his present state of mind. However, he maintains an air of breeziness around him that makes him likable among his group of friends. He is someone you wouldn’t mind hanging out with. The talks of ‘entering the world of adults’ bore him. The urgency of employment is not a pressing issue either. It causes a sudden disconnect with his friends. In such a frail state, he meets an aspiring writer called Aisha at a party and strikes up a conversation with her.
Unlike him, she has a clear understanding of her future prospects. Her minute fear of a foreign city does not envelop her entire personality. Her assurance in her beliefs and desires sparks a starting point for an escape from his present. He discovers the foreign concept of financial independence from her and begins a quest for his own vocation. Over time, her unwavering confidence makes him yearn for a strong sense of self for himself. The journey to find his own identity is the crux of the film, and we get to be a part of it.
His tiny steps toward growth will continue to resonate with you. His unbridled innocence in how he looks at things makes him a bundle of joy to witness over and over again. Who doesn’t love to see his efforts to make an egg omelet and the joy of making a successful one after numerous failed attempts? That scene alone summarizes the process of growing up — how it can be scary, discomforting, and filled with failures — yet those small accomplishments slowly build up to give structure to a layered personality.
At the end, I’m taking some space to tell you about my favorite part of the movie:
“Iktara & the late night walks of Aisha & Siddharth.”