I try to stay away from a movie as far as possible if it’s not a Hollywood movie. Not that I proclaim myself to be a person with good knowledge and understanding of movie making. Hollywood movies make up for their lack of storyline with their clean and colourful surrounding. Most important of all, I like the freedom they have to touch any subject with least,interventions from the, censor boards.
Bollywood movies rarely have sad endings which is not a real life scenario. In south movies there is less of a storyline and more of a Rajnikanth, Chirinjeevi,Mohanlal and the likes. Throw in a lot of foul language and your have a huge applauding crowd for north based movies. I’ve not seen any eastern based movies, except for the subject matter of this post.There have been exceptions in Bollywood in terms of the overall movie experience and I’ve rarely missed such movies.
Now to continue with the review. I would never have dared to watch any Bengali movie, had my colleague not told my the story in brief. Hemlock society was formed in the USA in the 90’s. Verbatim “its primary mission included providing information to dying persons and supporting legislation permitting physician assisted suicide”(source: wikipedia). The film revolves around a women with troubled past, recent breakup and a bleak future. She is stopped during her suicide attempt by person who explains her how her attempt would be unsuccessful and she would be left embarrassed, injured and may even face prison. He introduces himself to be a person from hemlock society, which could help her carry out her plan successfully. He enrolls her for a 3 day course which would teach her few sure methods of successful suicide.
As the story progresses, it becomes evident that the women is not ready to die and wants to stop the course. But the society wouldn’t let her go as a part of rules. What happens next cannot be revealed as it would ruin the plot for you.
Meanwhile the emotions in her family are pain to watch.
At certain points the acting by various actors in the movies seem lacking. But when the entire plot is revealed, everything fits perfectly. The cinematography is excellent with perfect closeups and mixing of sequences. No out of context dance numbers here. Just the plain soft songs with music pleasant to ears. Though I don’t understand Bengali, the subtitles were sufficiently clear.
Final say: a movie to watch.
Rating: 4/5
[…] For a person with limited linguistic capabilities, watching a film of an unknown language with subtitles can be an ordeal. More so if the film has been rated a lot, but after viewing it, turns out to be flop. I rarely venture into watching films of languages I don’t know, unless it had been appreciated by the critics. Another such movie which I had reviewed previously was Hemlock Society. […]