I saw this film at it's international premiere at Frederick, MD's Weinberg Theater, the first public screening of the film. Far From India is far from being a great film, a tear-jerker, or a piece with depth, hope, tragedy, or any other real emotion. In fact, for a film that purports to be an emotional examination of two different value systems (i.e. traditional indian values vs. compromised americanized values), the film fails to deliver anything more than a superficial look at either value system. With the exception of Nitin Adsul and Abby Sugrue, who are both excellent in the piece, evoking real emotion, the acting in the film is amateurish and forced, more like what one would see in a student film or a community theater production. Moreover, the scenes themselves are ended far too soon, not allowing the characters to truly express what is really going on inside their heads. The dialogue between the characters needs to give the audience more credit for it's ability to understand the subtle emotions of the human psyche expressed through speech, rather than purely bludgeoning them with the type of smalltalkish conversations that should be the conversation that characters would be having BEFORE the camera starts rolling. This is one of the major flaws of the film. Mr. Khara seems to have been more focused on creating an aesthecially pleasing image for the audience rather than focusing on the issues he wishes to present. The film is very aesthetically pleasing, the director of photography utilizes the 24p format to the utmost, creating a rich, colorful world, that, especially in lower lit scenes, gives the film a beautiful look. The director of photography does tend to over-light the scenes a bit in my opinion, but he still creates beautiful imagery, which is the true saving grace of the film itself. In addition to the general cold feeling one gets from the acting in the film, the sound needs an immense amount of work. The sound mix does not match in many scenes, a problem that gives the film and amateurish, rushed feel. The folk music used in the film in cliched and derivative, and gives otherwise cold scenes an artificial sense of emotion that borders on melodrama. The largest flaw in the film however is the lack of focus within the story. Mr. Khara flip flops back and forth between his characters' problems without a clear idea of where the story is going. The characters themselves need work too, their lack of depth and dynamism creating a feeling of stagnation through the film which is tied up to quickly and neatly at the end, which is evident with the return of Nitin's roommate Talvin to India, and the 180 degree turn of the theater director from hating Talvin, a theme carefully cultivated throughout the film, to admiring and respecting him in the space of 15 minutes. Overall, it would seem that Mr. Khara needs to watch more films to become more familiar with the language of filmmaking itself. It is a good accomplishment to finish a film, however, the story that Mr. Khara wants to tell has the potential to be very deeply emotional, and the way he has presented it glosses over much of the emotion and addresses some of the more touchy issues in a way that is cliched and superficial (i.e. the character of Chloe's father, the beating up of Nitin in a public bathroom). In the end, the film's style fails to transcend it's lack of substance, a flaw that is death to any movie without the raw emotional or character depth to keep a viewer interested for 95 minutes.
Review of Far from India
