J, Rohit, and I went to the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles last night. This is my fourth year in a row attending. The film directors usually show up after the movie for a little Q&A as an extra bonus. The first movie I ever saw at the festival was Everybody Says I’m Fine. The main character in that film (a mind-reading hair dresser) really “spoke to me.” I have returned every year to sample some desi cinema that, thankfully, isn’t Bollywood. I had purchased us some tickets to the movie Parzania starring Naseeruddin Shah and…Corin Nemec. Let me tell you folks that Parker Lewis CAN lose, but we will get to that later.
J was having a good time before the movie because she swears she saw either Tia or Tamara. She wasn’t sure which one but does it honestly matter? The word on the street is that the night before at the premiere, the likes of Reggie Miller, Chad Lowe (looking sad sans Hilary Swank), and Sheetal Sheth had all been spotted. I was in the mood for a good film because I have had a very unlucky month. First I had a bad cold for two weeks, then last Sunday I got a painful root canal infection that is requiring me to take antibiotics (which sucks because I’m running a relay marathon on Sunday). I’ve just been feeling very unsexy of late. On top of that I spilled my Thai-takeout all over my kitchen floor while rushing to make it to the festival to meet J. Would some cinema magic be able to numb all of my pain and put an uplifting bounce back into my step?
So here is the synopsis of the film Parzania:
Parzania is the breathtaking untold story of an event that changed the country and the world forever.
Cynical. Intelligent. Hilarious. Drunk. An American man by the name of Allan Webbings arrives in Ahmedabad city. For the longest time, Allan has been searching for answers, praying to find both internal peace and understanding of the horrors that religious differences can create. Allan has chosen India as his playground, and Gandhi as his subject. It’s here that he meets Cyrus, the local projectionist who brings the young and troubled intellectual into his beautiful family. Cyrus is a Parsi, a follower of a rarely practiced religion that is both small in numbers and neutral to religious politics. He has a beautiful wife named Shernaz, a practical woman who after eleven years still can’t resist his charisma and charm; two children- Parzan an imaginative ten year old that has developed his own world, the world of Parzania, where the buildings are made of chocolate and the mountains of ice cream. Parzan, in his mind, has created the perfect world, a world that only his eight year old little sister Dilshad truly understands.
Through Cyrus’s family, Allan finds his peace, right before the rest of the country loses its sanity. One morning, the beauty and peace that India is so famous for, is rocked beyond measure, as a bomb explodes in a train killing Hindus.
Within 24 hours, thousands of Muslims are slaughtered, making that day one of the largest acts of communal violence the country has ever seen. And in the midst of the terror and violence, Parzan comes up missing.
While Cyrus fights for his own sanity and searches for his child, Alan battles to uncover the truth behind the riots.
Parzania is inspired by a true story. [Link]
Where do I begin? Quite literally five minutes into the movie I tapped J’s shoulder and whispered to her:
“I don’t think I have ever watched a movie where five minutes into it I wanted all the characters to die.”
I thought I was being clever but J’s knowing nod (she’s a film major) made me feel foolish. She had already arrived at that conclusion in the first four minutes. The little boy “Parzan” should be the poster child for a new birth control campaign. Every line out of his mouth was cringe-inducing, sugarcoated garbage. That was just the beginning however. Why would Naseeruddin Shah allow this movie to be shown? It seemed that every actor in the movie including him was forced at gunpoint to over-act. The Indian-born actors, who were speaking in English, all sounded like they had a fake Indian accent. That just ain’t right. What happened next I’m not very proud of. Typing it here may come back and haunt me, especially if taken out of context, but I am going to reveal it for the sake of full disclosure.
Twenty minutes into the film:
J: Abhi, do you just want to leave? We can go do something else. Anything else is better.
Abhi: J, let’s just wait until the riots begin and people start getting killed. Maybe the killing will make it a little better.
Yes, I said it. I know how it sounds. Don’t sit there in front of your computers and judge me. You weren’t there. You didn’t see what we saw. The worst part of the movie was the performance of Corin Nemec who was trying very hard to look like a Kevin Bacon circa Tremors. It became very clear why his acting career didn’t survive childhood. He screamed each of his lines trying hard to look angst-ridden but ready to submit to Gandhi’s teachings. At his character’s lowest moment J and I were laughing hysterically with our hands cupped over our faces, so hard in fact that tears were running down my cheeks. I guess the director got the tears he was after at least.
How could anyone submit themselves to this crap? That was it. We left in the middle of the movie. As we walked out we walked directly past Naseeruddin Shah and director Rahul Dholakia in the lobby. Even they apparently couldn’t take it. I looked for some reviews of the film online today. This is what Rediff says:
Filmmaking is about telling a story, but every now and then, the story is so strong that the telling isn’t as important anymore.
Rahul Dholakia’s Parzania is a wake-up call, a powerful eye-opener to the world so close to us, a pointer to the bloodlust lurking beneath the semblance of calm.
It is, quite simply, a film that should be seen. [Link]
I’m crying once again.
I will be back at the Film Festival on Saturday night at 8:30 p.m.to watch Paanch. Despite the review above you usually find some gems at the festival so do try and come (and say hello if you see me).
