Mrs. Iyer and her baby son Santanam are traveling to Calcutta by bus and train. A family acquaintance named Raja is making the same trip, and he is asked to keep an eye on Mrs. Iyer. He is a nature photographer, which seems somehow appropriate since in the course of the film we see a natural beauty in India (e.g., forests and mountains) that seems rare in films.
The beginning of the film moves fairly slowly, so to say much more would reveal events that occur perhaps a third of the way through the film. If you would like an unspoiled film experience, you should probably stop reading now, although I obviously haven't said much yet.
The key fact is that Mrs. Iyer is Hindu while Raja is Muslim. We first learn this when she drinks out of a water bottle without touching it to her lips, while Raja drinks in what we in the United States would consider the "normal" manner (the subtitles helpfully clue us into this difference). When the bus is stopped by Hindus out for revenge on Muslims, Mrs. Iyer saves Raja's life by lying and saying that they are a Hindu couple.
This film has a pretty clear message about violence between Hindus and Muslims, which is not too different from violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, the Bosnians and Serbians, and so on throughout human history. I was glad to learn about this in what seemed like a balanced manner, and essentially without the usual Bollywood musical numbers, but the film seemed to be a bit one dimensional, without much else to recommend it.
Seen on 11/2/2002 at the 2002 Hawaii International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Maile award for best feature.
The beginning of the film moves fairly slowly, so to say much more would reveal events that occur perhaps a third of the way through the film. If you would like an unspoiled film experience, you should probably stop reading now, although I obviously haven't said much yet.
The key fact is that Mrs. Iyer is Hindu while Raja is Muslim. We first learn this when she drinks out of a water bottle without touching it to her lips, while Raja drinks in what we in the United States would consider the "normal" manner (the subtitles helpfully clue us into this difference). When the bus is stopped by Hindus out for revenge on Muslims, Mrs. Iyer saves Raja's life by lying and saying that they are a Hindu couple.
This film has a pretty clear message about violence between Hindus and Muslims, which is not too different from violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, the Bosnians and Serbians, and so on throughout human history. I was glad to learn about this in what seemed like a balanced manner, and essentially without the usual Bollywood musical numbers, but the film seemed to be a bit one dimensional, without much else to recommend it.
Seen on 11/2/2002 at the 2002 Hawaii International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Maile award for best feature.