Stop in the Name of Man!

A review on Anand Patwardhan's documentary In The Name of God.

The Alliance Française presented a few documentary films by noted film-maker Anand Patwardhan. When it was announced that the first film, ”In the Name of God”, was about politics and the Babri Masjid demolition, I groaned. Politics is one topic I generally avoid like the plague. Never been interested. I am of the kind who believes that the word “politics” is derived from the following words:

Poly: Greek word for “Many”
Tick: Bloodsucking creatures

I however decided to stick on and watch the film because I had nothing better to do. What I saw for the next 75 minutes was very disturbing.

”Long ago” to 1949.
Ayodha. The birthplace of Lord Ram. A town where hindus and muslims co-existed peacefully. They respected and loved one another. The exact spot of Lord Ram’s birth had always been a mystery to one and all. A hundred temples in Ayodhya claimed to be the birth-site of Lord Ram.

Babri Masjid was a 16th century mosque built in Ayodhya by Emperor Babar. It was rumoured for many decades that the Babri Masjid was built after demolishing a Ram temple which was the exact birth-site of Lord Ram. This rumour however did not strain relationships between hindus and muslims. A temple was built near the mosque. The temple was called the “Ram Janmabhoomi Temple”. Hindus prayed at the temple and muslims prayed at the mosque. All was well.

1949.
One night, the priest of the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple, without anyone’s knowledge, moved the idols of the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple into the mosque with the assistance of a few government officials and support of a District Magistrate. The priest later claimed to have dreamt of a 4-5 year old Lord Ram beckoning him into the mosque and assumed that that was the birthplace of Lord Ram.

The next day was Friday. When the muslims went to pray at the Babri Masjid, they were surprised to find the Police there. They were denied entrance into the mosque. The Muezzin was told by the District Magistrate that things would get back to normal the next Friday.

1990.
The Muezzin still waits for that Friday.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a political party digs up the Ram Janmabhoomi issue and declares that the Babri Masjid was indeed the birth-site of Lord Ram. The VHP vows to demolish the mosque and build a new Ram temple there.

This documentary film captures the birth and rapid growth of VHP’s campaign to build the Ram temple at Ayodhya by destroying the Babri Masjid. This film was filmed and released prior to the actual Babri Masjid demolition. The Babri Masjid demolition resulted in the deaths of 5000 people all over India. Communal violence.

Featuring interviews with VHP activists, the common man as well as a few important people who were directly involved in this issue, this film looks at different people and their perspective of the whole issue.

While the VHP activists’ words drip of religious intolerance, it is surprising to find that the common man talks about this issue in a very practical and logical way. Many interviews with the common man (mostly illiterate and belonging to a very low caste) reveal that he is more intelligent that the media portrays him to be. An ironworker in a village displays higher levels of intelligence than a VHP activist who is a lawyer.

The priest of the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in 1990, Shri Laldas, is another man whose words are full of wisdom. He has a genuine concern for humanity. He feels that the whole Ram Janmabhoomi issue was resurrected by the VHP to garner votes in the next election. He says that the leaders of the VHP do not really care about the Ram temple.

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''The VHP leaders tell everyone that they’d go to any length to build the Ram temple here. Have they come to this temple at least once to offer their prayers?''

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Shri Laldas

(Shri Laldas was assassinated in 1992, after this documentary was released. The assailants are unknown and scot-free.)

The interviewed VHP activists, on the other hand, turn out to be educated but illogical people. Most of them brandish swords and tridents. The film actually captures them first rehearsing and then loudly chanting these slogans at public meetings:

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“We will use the oil of Dabur!
To burn the descendents of Babar!”

“Babri Masjid hamari hai!
Kasi, Mathura baaki hai!”
(Babri Masjid is ours, Kasi and Mathura are next!)

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The film also captures the plight of muslims in Ayodhya who live every day in uncertainty and can “smell death around the corner”.

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Awards won by In the Name of God:

Filmfare Award, Best Documentary, India, 1992
National Award, Best Investigative Doc. India, 1992
Ecumenical Prize, Nyon, Switzerland, 1993
Documentary Prize, Freibourg, Switzerland, 1993
Citizen’s Prize, Yamagata, Japan, 1993

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In the Name of God is thought-provoking. It is very, very hard-hitting. It talks about blind faith and the alarming decline of humanity in today’s world. It is definitely not a film you’d want to watch with your family on a nice evening over biscuits and tea.

I sincerely hope this film becomes irrelevant over time.

The film ends (so does this review) with a doha by the poet Kabir:

Saints, I see the world is mad.
If I tell the truth they rush to beat me,
If I lie they trust me.
I’ve seen the pious Hindus, rule followers,
Early morning bath takers –
Killing souls, they worship rocks.
They know nothing.

I’ve seen plenty of Muslim teachers, holy men
Reading their holy books
And teaching their pupils techniques.
They know just as much.

And posturing yogis, hypocrites,
Hearts crammed with pride,
Praying to brass, to stones, reeling
With pride in their pilgrimage,
Fixing their caps and prayer beads,
Painting their brow-marks and arm-marks,
Braying their hymns and their couplets,
Reeling. They never heard of Soul.

The Hindu says Ram is the Beloved,
The Turk says Rahim,
Then they kill each other.

No one knows the secret.
They buzz their mantras from house to house,
Puffed with pride.
Their pupils drown along with their gurus.
In the end they’re very sorry.

Kabir says, listen saints:
They’re all deluded!
Whatever I say, nobody gets it.
Its so simple.

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© Guru Smaran

Dark Side of the Epic

A review on Anand Patwardhan's documentary We Are Not Your Monkeys.

Anand Patwardhan’s We are not your Monkeys is about many things: the caste system, gender oppression and humanity.

Backdrop: The Ramayana.

Thematically, We are not your Monkeys could be broken down into two parts.

The first part is about the condition of Dalits, an untouchable caste in India, in today’s world. It talks about the dehumanization of the Dalits by the upper castes who call them “untouchables” and yet enjoy a comfortable life due to them. We see frames of Dalits doing all the dirty work like cleaning sewers, etc. to make life easier and much more livable for the upper caste people.

The second part is about the Ramayana. A dalit’s perspective that talks about caste oppression and lack of basic human rights in the Ramayana.

It starts off by telling us how Lord Ram, a foreigner, took over from the Dalits their land.

(Sanksrit literary scholars have actually found references over a take-over of a dark-skinned populace by nomadic Aryan tribes. Lord Ram belonged to the Aryan race and is hence portrayed as an outsider.)

Some excerpts:

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“You portrayed our god Hanuman as a monkey.”

“You formed a monkey army to attack Lanka.”

“When you finally captured Lanka, you wanted Sita to prove her chastity to you.” (Portraying Lord Ram as a male chauvinist.)

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There are also references to the Babri Masjid dispute at Ayodhya and their opposition to the issue.

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“You now want a monkey army to grab Ayodhya. But this monkey army will not help you seize Ayodhya.”

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The video ends thus:

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We sing the song of humanity. And we will make you human as well.

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“We are not your monkeys”, released in 1993, is only 5 minutes long. It is a music video. It is a song composed by Sambhaji Bhagat, Anand and the late Daya Pawar, and sung by Sambhaji Bhagar.

This perspective of the Ramayana, though very controversial, is novel and thought-provoking. It is something we haven’t heard. Though not many may agree to this perspective, it still makes one think for a long time.

The video is a must-watch. It is powerful and hard-hitting. It questions the character of one of the biggest heroes in Indian Mythology, a hero who has an “all white” character. It questions history, religion, and things we have believed in all our lives.

PS: The quotes I have mentioned above are from memory and hence may not be accurate.

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© Guru Smaran

The Horrors of War

A review on Hiroshima, a book by John Hersey.



August 06, 1945, Hiroshima.

Dr. Ferufumi Sasaki walked around one of the corridors of the huge Red Cross Hospital with a blood specimen for a test.

Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, was watching a neighbor tear down his house.

Ms. Toshinki Sasaki, a clerk working at East Asia Tin Works, turned her head to talk to the girl working next to her.

The Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church was about to unload a cart full of clothes.

Dr. Masakazu Fujii sat down to read the Osaka Asahi on the porch of his single-doctor hospital.

Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge lay on a cot, reading a Jesuit magazine, Stimmen der Zeit.

The next thing all of them remember was seeing a brilliant white light. When they came back to their senses, they were amongst ruins. The day was dark. Hiroshima fell like a neatly-piled pack of cards blown by a casual gust of wind. An atomic bomb had just ripped through Hiroshima.

Captain Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the bomb (nicknamed Little Boy), wrote in his log, “My God, what have we done?”

Children started shivering heavily and stopped suddenly, dead. Men and women who were burnt and bleeding profusely were unusually quiet, only moaning softly for water. The bomb left about a hundred thousand people dead. Many were and still are physically and mentally affected.

Written by Pulitzer Prize winning author John Hersey, Hiroshima is a journalistic account of these six survivors of the Hiroshima A-bomb. The book records what these six people were doing when they experienced the “white noiseless flash”, their reactions on seeing the widespread destruction, how each of them escaped the conflagration that had materialized throughout the city and the mental and physical trauma that these six had to go through and still go through, as a result of being exposed to severe radiation caused by the A-bomb.

The author went back to Hiroshima almost four decades after this book’s first publication to locate these six people. The last chapter is about how and what these six survivors were doing in life, when he found them again.

Hersey’s narrative is engrossing. His description of Hiroshima after the bombing is detailed. Though the book is only about 150 pages long, a lot is covered. The language is simple and uncomplicated, thus making it readable even for people with very limited knowledge of English.

The book is disturbing to a certain extent and hence may not go down well with some people. Reading a book dealing entirely with a catastrophe and it’s aftermath can be harrowing for some people. But for people like me who feel strongly about war and it’s disastrous consequences, this book fuels the fire within.

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© Guru Smaran

Poetry in Motion

A review on Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

Messages are aplenty in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams [1990]. The movie consists of eight episodes, or dreams, with themes ranging from environment conservation to the humane side of war, the dangers of nuclear power and the ill-effects of nuclear warfare. While some of these messages are very subtly conveyed, some are direct and hit you really hard.

The eight dreams are:

Sunshine Through the Rain.
A young boy witnesses a wedding of foxes.



The Peach Orchard.
A young boy’s family is cursed by spirits for cutting down their peach orchard. The spirits, feeling pity for the young boy, perform a ‘peach blossoming’ ritual for him.


The Blizzard.
Four mountaineers are trying to reach camp during a blizzard. Will they?


The Tunnel.
An army commander is returning home after the war. He has to pass a tunnel to get home. Will his life be the same again after the encounter at the tunnel?

This dream reminded me a lot of the Wilfred Owen poem “A Strange Meeting”.


Crows.
An amateur artist gets inside Vincent Van Gogh’s works and ends up meeting the man himself.

This episode boasts of some absolutely gorgeous visuals. Noted film-maker Martin Scorsese plays Vincent Van Gogh.


Mount Fuji in Red.
An accident occurs at the nuclear power plants, causing Mount Fuji to erupt. Poisonous gases all over the air. Chaos everywhere. What’ll happen to man?


The Weeping Demon.
Featuring monstrous dandelions and man-turned-demons that eat each other to survive, this is a chilling tale about the effects of nuclear war.


Village of the Watermills.
A city-bred comes to a very scenic village where man lives in harmony with nature. A dream about environment conservation.

I’d give anything to spend the rest of my life in this village.

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Dreams is a visual delight. Never before have I seen such an exquisite display of color. Never have I seen color exploited like this. The breath-taking locales often leave the viewer gasping in awe. Crows and Village of the Watermills are shining examples of this.

The graphics in the movie are simply awesome. Special praise should be given to George Lucas’s ILM Special Effects Group for the effects in the Crows episode.

The overall acting is top-notch. Akira Terao and Martin Scorsese are good in their portrayals. Kurosawa even gets natural performances by the two young boys, who appear in the first two episodes.

The background music and dialogues are minimal. Silence rules. The silence plays a big role in leaving an impression within you. The sound of the trickling of a stream when all is quiet sure does have an effect on you.

The direction by Akira Kurosawa and Ishirô Honda is flawless. Kurosawa captures nature at it’s finest hour, leaving our senses overwhelmed by it’s sheer beauty. He also indulges in a lot of fog, giving the movie a slightly surrealistic feel. Ishirô Honda directed “The Tunnel”, “Mount Fuji in Red” and the prologue and epilogue of “The Weeping Demon” (source: IMDB). The editing is crisp. Lengthwise, the shots are neither too long nor too short, but just right. One second less and the buildup would be incomplete. One second more and the viewer’s concentration would waver.

These dreams, like typical dreams, are left incomplete. Each story is about 10 to 20 minutes in length. Each episode ends in it’s prime, just when the pressure mounts and you get fully engrossed. You are left to imagine the end for yourself. Episodes like The Tunnel, Mount Fuji in Red and The Weeping Demon are thought-provoking and unforgettable because they don’t have an ending.


In short, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams is a must-watch. The movie and it’s messages linger on within your head for a long time, making you think about what you have just experienced. Dreams is best watched on a lazy Sunday afternoon, when the clouds have just started hinting of rain.

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© Guru Smaran

Powerful and hard-hitting

A review on Elmar Klos and Ján Kadár's The Shop on Main Street.

The Shop on Main Street [1965], set during World War 2 Nazi-occupied Slovakia, is about Tono Brtko, a poor, skilled carpenter in a small town, who, though being an Aryan, has his own doubts about the intentions of the occupying Nazi forces. But when his brother-in-law, a Nazi officer, through his influence, appoints Tono as the Aryan Administrator of a button shop belonging to Rozalie Lautmann, an old Jewish lady, he accepts, since it would mean a more comfortable financial position, and since it would shut up his constantly-nagging wife.

Rozalie turns out to be a really old woman, hard of hearing and sight, who doesn’t know anything about the present situation, thanks to the Jewish community, which is shielding her from the news of the tyrannic Nazis. The Jewish community strikes a deal with Tono, wherein he gets paid a regular income every week, if he pretended to be her assistant.

This arrangement works out smoothly for a while, until the Nazis start evacuating the Jews to labor camps. Tono has, by then, developed a good friendship with Rozalie, and the dilemma that he finds himself in, whether he should hide Rozalie or hand her over to the Nazis, makes up the rest of the movie.

What sets this film apart from other World War II movies is that while the focus of most other movies is more upon concentration camps, cold-blooded cruelty and mass murder, The Shop on Main Street is more about an individual’s state of mind when under the most trying of circumstances. Tono’s is a Catch-22 situation: if he hides her, the Nazis would sooner or later find out about her and kill him for being a Jew-lover; and if he turns in Rozalie, he’d have to live the rest of his life with the guilt of being responsible for her death. His dilemma starts off on a low note and gradually crescendoes into a highly volatile situation, where we find Tono wildly oscillating between the two options he has before him. This dilemma, which takes up the last 30 or so minutes of the movie’s total running time of 128 minutes, is the most powerfully portrayed inner conflict I’ve seen on screen.



The movie wouldn’t have made such a big impact on it’s viewers, had it not been for the brilliant performances of the principal characters. Jozef Kroner, who plays Tono, has a very expressive face and equally expressive eyes, and he uses them to great effect, especially during the emotionally intense last part of the movie. Ida Kaminska, in an Oscar-nominated role, is marvelous as the senile, disoriented Rozalie.

Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, this movie is based on a novel Obchod na korze (also the Slovak title of the movie), written by Ladislav Grosman. The film boasts of some awesome cinematography by Vladimír Novotný, and is shot in very rich black and white. It won many awards, including the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film.

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© Guru Smaran

High on budget, low on logic

A review on Shanker's Anniyan

28 Crores. That’s the budget of director Shankar’s latest film, Anniyan. For the unacquainted, director Shankar is famous in Tamil Nadu (don’t know about the rest of India) for his “one man against the system” movies. All his movies have been big hits, save his last film, Boys, and so Anniyan was touted as Shankar’s comeback film. The hype about the movie was built for over a year, and everyone’s expectations naturally rose. The release date kept getting postponed, and the audience’s impatience to watch the movie grew.

The movie finally released on June 17th, the day I was (with my friends) in Coimbatore for a friend’s marriage. The celebrations got over around noon, and we decided to watch the movie. At the theater, in the ticket counter, we were asked if we wanted the Rs. 60 or the Rs. 120 tickets. After a small debate, we decided to get the Rs. 60 tickets (a decision I’m proud we made). We went into the theater, and the movie started.

The movie revolves around Ramanujam Iyengar (played by Vikram), a young, righteous (to the limit) lawyer, who gets appalled whenever he sees people breaking laws around him. Now, when I said “breaking laws”, I’m sure you would have thought on the lines of murder, rape, etc., but this is where your first bubble is burst. Ramanujam reacts even to the tiniest of things, like if someone slightly crosses over the yellow traffic-separating line in the middle of the road. Now when I said “Ramanujam reacts”, you would have got the impression that he beats the sh*t out of these people, but here again, you’re wrong. Ramanujam is a wuss, and the only way he reacts is to whine and yelp like a hurt pup about rules, as a result of which he is nicknamed “Rules” Ramanujam. The first half hour of this three hour movie shows us more situations where he reacts similarly, and after a point, your fist feels strongly drawn towards his lower jaw, and you get this irresistible urge to sock him hard repeatedly.

Not only does he irritate us with his constant whining, but also Nandini (played by Sadha), a neighbor, whom he is in love with for years. When he finally professes his love to her, she rejects him because he’s a wuss. When she rejects him, the audience completely empathizes with her because by then, Ramanujam has pissed you off beyond limits.

Meanwhile, a killer is on the loose, a killer who calls himself Anniyan (stranger) and runs a website, a killer who kills those who’ve committed the smallest of crimes, a killer whose site, you’ve guessed it right, Ramanujam logs on to, to complain against wrong-doers. Ramanujam’s complaints are answered, and the people he has complained about are killed in heinous ways (One, for example, is covered with Tandoori Chicken marinade, and is immersed in a huge cauldron full of boiling oil.). One clue that the killer leaves after all his crimes is an anagram of a Sanskrit word, which eventually turns out to be the names of punishments mentioned in an ancient book called the Garuda Puranam, which Ramanujam turns out to be well-versed in.

While the killer is busy marinading crime-doers, a supermodel called Remo has wooed Nandini, winning her heart. This supermodel rides superbikes, shakes a leg with Yana Gupta in a song, and speaks English in a casual “trying my best to sound ultra-cool” accent while moving his hands around as if he were some hyperactive rapper.

Now I’m sure you don’t have a clue about what’s happening, so I’ll make things clearer. Ramanujam, Anniyan and Remo are the same person. Ramanujam suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder, as a result of which he becomes Anniyan and Remo: Anniyan, because of the trauma of seeing people not following rules; and Remo, because of the trauma caused by Nandini not loving him. If you’re wondering about the origin of Ramanujam’s MPD, there’s a flashback about his sister getting electrocuted to death as a result of negligence by an Electricity Board worker. This flashback will both answer your question as well as make you laugh your innards out, thanks to the ultra-awful background music and the underlying lameness that laces the flashback.

Talking about the background music reminds me of the songs, which were just about okay. Looks like a lot of money was spent on picturising them, which is a sad thing, because the songs, instead of contributing to the plot, slow it down.

The action, on the other hand, is pretty good, though some fight sequences seemed unnecessary, like the one where Anniyan fights about 100 Karate students in a Karate school. This fight, shot with multiple cameras, is a rip-off from the Neo vs. The Infinite Agents fight from Matrix Reloaded, and served no purpose, except that it tries to make a statement that director Shankar’s movies are technically good. But putting in an elaborate fight costing a lot of money, only for the sake of making a statement is a little too much, don’t you think?

As far as the acting goes, Vikram, who plays Ramanujam/Anniyan/Remo, is quite good. He does really well in the police torture room scene towards the end, where Ramanujam alternates between Anniyan and himself repeatedly in a single shot. Good body language. The movie boasts of a lot of other good actors like Nedumudi Venu, Prakash Raj, Nasser and Saurabh Shukla, but sadly, all of them are under-utilized. Sadha, the heroine, who gets an opportunity to prove she can act, ends up having the same surprised expression on her face for most of the movie. Vivek, the comedian, provides the laughs (the intentional ones), doing a pretty decent job.

Where the movie fails is in it’s logic, or the lack of it. There are plenty of incidents in the movie that seem illogical and absurd, some of which are:

- Like mentioned earlier, the first half hour of this movie is filled with situations that show Ramanujam whining about rules. And when Ramanujam whines, he whines in surprise and disbelief, as if he’s seeing these situations for the first time, in spite of being in a city like Chennai for many years.

- Ramanujam, when Ramanujam, wears his hair in a bun, like a lot of hardcore, traditional Iyengars do. When he becomes Remo, his hair has brown-colored streaks in them, and seems shorter. When he becomes Anniyan, all his hair comes forward, covering his face, so that when the camera shows a shot from his point-of-view, there’s curly hair falling all over the camera. This being the only visible change in appearance, I find it absurd that even Nandini and a childhood friend, who works for the Police Crime Branch, don’t recognize Ramanujam when he becomes Remo or Anniyan, even though they know him for many years.

- When the police raid Ramanujam’s house, they find a lot of Remo and Anniyan stuff like video cameras and hair gel, along with other equipment. Among these is a book on HTML and Java, which indicates that it was used for creating the Anniyan website. This is the first time I’m hearing of a MPD personality actually taking the time to learn HTML and Java, so that he can create a website. I mean, what the hell?

- Anniyan kills a drunkard-cum-bum for spitting on Ramanujam.



Summing it up, I’d say that Anniyan is just about okay, and is not worth the hype it created, nor the money that was spent on it. It could have been shot on a much lesser budget, had Shankar concentrated lesser on the grandeur that seems unnecessary. It could have been a better movie, had Shankar concentrated more on the movie’s logic…

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© Guru Smaran

Where Is The Friend's Home?

A review on Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is The Friend's Home?

Eight-year-old Mohammed Reza, due to his carelessness, has, for the third time, written his homework on loose sheets of paper instead of his notebook, which he has misplaced yet again. Ahmed, his bench-mate at school, looks on as their teacher gives Reza a final warning: The next time, you will be expelled, he says.

Thus begins Abbas Kiarostami’s 1987 Persian film, Where Is The Friend’s Home?, a movie about a simple mix-up where Ahmed accidentally ends up taking Reza’s (identical) homework notebook home that afternoon.

Ahmed, shocked by this discovery, wants to return the notebook to Reza, lest he be expelled. He however faces a few problems doing this. He does not know where Reza lives (all he knows is the name of his village - Poshteh). Also, his mother does not permit him to go. Ahmed seizes the opportunity when his mother asks him to buy bread, and runs the entire distance to neighboring Poshteh.

Ahmed’s run to Poshteh is a scene I’ll remember for a long time, thanks to the simple, uplifting background music that’s still playing in my head, and the lovely visuals that feature a mostly-barren landscape. It is a long run, and the immense effort Ahmed puts into the run reflects his unwavering commitment to keep Reza out of trouble.

What then ensues is a search through the labyrinthian streets of Poshteh, a frantic search that lasts until night. Ahmed, during this search, encounters many adults who, owing to their failure at comprehending the urgency of the situation, deviate him, give him false information that leads him to dead-ends, and ultimately slow him down.
This search takes up a majority of the film’s total duration of 83 minutes, and during this, the movie’s pace slows down considerably. This, rather than making the viewer experience boredom, fills one with restlessness, especially when Ahmed is misled. When an old man claiming to know Reza’s house leads Ahmed at a painfully slow pace, all the while talking non-stop about wooden doors, the viewer sighs in frustration and, like Ahmed, wishes the old man would hush and speed up.

What makes this movie special is it’s simplicity and it’s ability to convey messages directly and yet very subtly. Dialogues are reduced to the bare-minimum. Kiarostami’s script relies more on Ahmed’s body language throughout the movie, and Babek Ahmed Poor, who plays Ahmed, pulls it off brilliantly. Also worth mentioning is Ahmed’s characterization. Ahmed is not the average, loud, smart-ass kid that every other movie has, but a normal boy with a naivety typical of his age. This endears him to the audience, and when he’s helplessly searching for Reza in an uncooperative adult world, one’s heart goes out to him. Towards the end of the movie, one realizes that s/he understands Ahmed better than the elders around him (including his parents) do.

The movie ends on a quiet, refreshing and delightful note, and leaves the viewer gasping with overwhelming joy at it’s sheer beauty and purity. Going into the details of the climax would deny you the privilege of experiencing it first-hand, and I’ll refrain from doing so.

Summing it up, Where Is The Friend’s Home? is an awesome movie, a must-see. It very beautifully brings out the rock-solid friendship between the boys, and also makes one look reproachfully at adults, their attitudes and their inability to understand children. I’m not too sure if you’ll be able to get hold of this movie, but if you do happen to find it, don’t miss it!

--© Guru Smaran