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]
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p> 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]
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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).
Delightful! 😉
DonÂ’t sit there in front of your computers and judge me. You werenÂ’t there. You didnÂ’t see what we saw.
Hilarious.
We definitely need more snark on the Mutiny.
Corin’s website gives an insight into his own views on finding internal peace and understanding…
I liked last night’s shorts program and I’m going to tonight’s too. Attendance is not as big as I remember it, though maybe that’s just because I’m thinking of weekend screenings from the past v. the weeknight one I attended.
at least the festival has a great logo. what the hell was reggie miller doing there? i saw him wearing a weird hat. i thought he was toni from tony toni tone.
sanjay
reggie miller? i love reggie miller.. darn it.. wish i was in LA… he’s a boy from riverside poly 🙂
naseeruddin shah…….
(sighs)
you’re right. i think will see it.
I am planning on going to something at IFFLA, can’t make Saturday night though, anybody else have any recommendations for Saturday afternoon or Sunday?
i suggest the widow colony, playing at 3:30 on saturday. i saw it at it’s north american premiere about two months ago and it is a very moving documentary which makes you think about what remains to be done to bring justice for the widows of the delhi 84 pogroms. you can read about it here: http://www.thewidowcolony.com
the director, harpreet kaur, (a 2nd gen!) has really made the sikh community in america, and worldwide, proud for putting these buried stories on the screen.
if you see it, let me know what you think!
Hell yeah man, this movie sucked.
To give the lucky few who haven’t seen and want a taste of the colorful writing displayed on screen, here is my favorite line (I am paraphasing a bit):
Mom (aka bad cop): Your son is acting up again. Dad (aka good cop): What did he do, steal the Taj Mahal?
See you at Paanch, Rohit
Why is it that children on Indian tv and cinema are often so horribly sickly sweet?
“Would some cinema magic be able to numb all of my pain and put an uplifting bounce back into my step?”
Try Vicodin instead. It is more fun.
It is very fashionable to talk about minorities being killed (and inflating the numbers by a factor of 10), but not at all fashionable to talk about the 500000 Hindus massacred in Kashmir, or the millions made refugees and driven away from their own land!
But this is the way of the “intellectuals”, the neo-colonistic “liberal youth”, ay?
sigh Paging Rakesh Sharma, i guess.
The film, if you can call it that, made me want to hurl and stab my eyes with hot pokers….at the same time.
We should have peaced and snuck into Scary Movie 4. For realz.
pk, thanks for the widow colonies link. it looks to be incredible.
doctor.chattop,
is it you chatto?the one with the institute record??
Abhi, thanks for validating what I suspected. I passed on a screening at the Asia Society last night because, just a fortnight after being underwhelmed by “Being Cyrus”, I thought “Parzania” was just one too many off-beat-movies-about-Parsis-starring-Naseeruddin-Shah in less than a month.
Meena, interestingly enough, Deepa Mehta said this week that one of the reasons she was so pleased with Sarala, the young Sri Lankan girl to play the nine-year-old widow in “Water”, was because of all the child actors she saw in India, they over-emoted all over the place, something she chalked up to being influenced by so many TV soaps and Bollywood movies.
Saw the second showing of the second group of shorts this afternoon. The quality of most of them far surpassed anything I had been expecting. I wish I could have attended more of the festival! Did anyone see “Dombivili Fast” and how was it?
I thought the second set of shorts were pretty week as to story/acting but were technically well made – the last one (6 feet in 7 minutes) was funny and that kid deserves more work esp in non-Indian movies. he could be the indian seth green.
as for celebrity sightings – add mario van peeples (he is married/involved? with indian gal), anoushka shankar and karsh kale.
i thought “water” was filmed well but story was lacking. “widow colony” was very good. i thought the selection of movies/shorts/docs was a bit weak overall – the festival was organized very well but there weren’t too many selections i was eager to see, esp when you compare to other festivals in US/UK and Canada.
BTW – if anyone who works for the festival reads this – note we indians need more than 4 pieces of chicken makhani, one spoonful of sag and three grains of rice when we eat a $60 party!
abhi!
i cant believe its been four years since we saw that movie. dude tho why do you want to see people die!?! i thought you were a peaceful, rational, man abhi!
i hope panch was better. pray tell it cant be worse.
anji
I need to make a movie on some poor chilluns abducted/ lost / in a rampage by a murderous Hindu mob as well. That should make me as famous as all ’em film-makers and get me invited to LA, Europe, this that, … Of course, in my film, Hercule Poirot will find the real culprits, the khaki chaddi clad Hindutvawadis…yum yum!!
I can already count the $’scoming in, if not that- I can score with all them artsy chicks at artsy festivals!(hopefully…)