'The Last Film Show' movie review

Film The Last Film ShowDirectorPan NalinCastBhavin Rabari Dipen RavalRating 35Frankly as a moviebuff it bothered me no end okay to a huge extent anyway that I was unable to place this film to its timeline in realityIn the sense that the film about a little village boy who finds access to a projection room in a cinema named Galaxy and is besotted by it is supposedly set in 2010Only that the films he watches repeatedly through the lightwindow in that precious room of the theatrersquos uppermost deck effectively alternates between Jodhaa Akbar 2008 and Khuda Gawah 1992Therersquos a smattering of other random lsquoBollywoodrsquo pix defying generationsgenres too And this wouldnrsquot be so much of a bother for an international audience given the number of top filmfestival olivebranches I noticed in the opening creditsBut itrsquos not a trivial niggle for a movie about movies per se And what draws a young child into this hallucinatory world of cinema mdash is it the action drama actors story sexviolencehellip I think above all cinema for the young mind is magic first mdash as it was for the world when it was invented anywayThatrsquos essentially what the young boy a naturally terrific Bhavin Rabari is viscerally consumed by mdash to begin and end with What comes between him and the filmsAlso Read lsquoDoctor Grsquo movie reviewPractically everything from familyfather poverty and the distance to the closest theatre starting with where he lives mdash a strange hamlet called Chalala in Kathiawad Saurashtra in Gujarat with nothing around besides a forest full of deer and lions and a railway station servicing passengers at a pitstopThis is where the boy serves tea moonlighting in his fatherrsquos chai shop Which also explains the kid finding life inside a world of lights and sounds insteadThe picture opens with the shot of what look like kash fields with the child running through it while the rail track is nearby mdash making for a recognisable tribute to Pather PanchaliWhat follows is the bright kid mdash blessed with jugaad that is pulling off innovations based on unlikely ingredients around mdash to recreate the magic of cinema himselfSeeing through broken coloured bottles lensing the world as if through a camera sometimes Learning to project a reel on a flat surface recreating an actual projector through its operable science aloneMust admit for personal reasons Irsquove had to watch this film on a screener a small screen mdash can totally image how the display of reflection light industrial natural colours and indeed some moneyshots to do with sprockets and negatives would be way more mesmerising in an actual theatre This is a work of visual art alrightAlso Irsquod love to meet such a kid Hersquod be playing around with a cellphone at present It turns out itrsquos the director himself This is a semiautobiographical workItrsquos during the course of writing this review that I learnt Pan Nalin 57 actually stands for Nalinkumar Pandya a Gujarati director who because of films like Samsara 2001 Angry Indian Goddesses 2015 mdash both of which somehow show up as films within this film mdash Irsquod thus far assumed as an Indian lsquofestival directorrsquo based bred abroadEvidently not And while all filmmakers without an exception have their own romantic stories of how they first got infatuated with cinema many of them involving theatres and projection Nalinrsquos is captivating enough for the strides he took to strike it big if you mayWhich is probably the reason the picturersquos timesetting seems slightly off mdash no sign of cellphones anywhere only landlines for communication as train tracks go from meter to broad gaugeOf course this doesnrsquot take away from the expected allusion to Giuseppe Tornatorersquos classic Cinema Paradiso 1988 a deeply political film that The Last Film Show is unfortunately not But will be compared against nonethelessFor likewise along with the film unspools a unique bond between a boy and a cinema projectionist Except we donrsquot quite know which direction this is headed besides the inevitable lament on the loss of cinema itself as the world including film goes digital eventuallyThe poor desi boy weighs in on the power of light from where come stories therefore appear the magic of movies The Last Film Show originally in Gujarati Chhello Show is Indiarsquos official entry to the Oscars 2023 Whether or not I think itrsquos the best Indian film of the year thereby is immaterial mdash you can tell why the jury picked it thoughAlso Read Akshay Kumar starrer Ram Setu gets an official game

'The Last Film Show' movie review

Film: 'The Last Film Show'
Director: Pan Nalin
Cast: Bhavin Rabari, Dipen Raval
Rating: 3/5

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Home / Entertainment / Bollywood News / Article / 'The Last Film Show' movie review

'The Last Film Show' movie review

Film: 'The Last Film Show' Director: Pan NalinCast: Bhavin Rabari, Dipen RavalRating: 3/5

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Latest Photos

Latest Videos

Latest Web Stories

Mid-Day Fast

Film: 'The Last Film Show'
Director: Pan Nalin
Cast: Bhavin Rabari, Dipen Raval
Rating: 3/5