![]() ![]() Sonawane’s wide-angle cinematography finds something hushed and holy in the light of a train slicing through a sunburnt field. “Last Film Show” doesn’t fetishize Samay’s poverty, for it was Nalin’s poverty too before he found success with films like “Samsara” and “Valley of Flowers.” But Swapnil S. Played by Bhavin Rabari, a precocious and compulsively watchable nine-year-old Gujarati boy who shares much in common with his character, Samay doesn’t really know what cinema is at the start of the movie, and yet his life is already full of the stuff. Two of them are Sergio Leone and (early) Terrence Malick, and both drift into our mind’s eye from the moment we first see nine-year-old Samay walking along the railroad tracks that stretch past the modest house from which his overbearing father Bapuji (Dipen Raval) sells tea to passengers aboard the rickety trains that stop nearby. ![]() Where to Watch This Week’s New Movies, from ‘Fast X’ to ‘Master Gardener’Ī semi-autobiographical fable set in the Indian state of Gujarat where Nalin was raised, “Last Film Show” might sound like a cutesy modern riff on “Cinema Paradiso,” but - as you already know - this achingly bittersweet requiem for a dream pulls from a much deeper pool of inspirations. This is a story by and about someone who truly needs that light to see the way forward, and has always been able to find it in places where few others were even willing to look. By the end of Nalin’s sweet but wistful bildungsroman, however, the decision to open with such a hokey tip of the hat seems entirely justified (and not just because all five of those filmmakers are paid cute homage along the way). In the moment, that feels like both way too much and not enough. “Gratitude for illuminating the path…” it reads, followed by a short list of names that consists of the Lumière brothers, Eadweard Muybridge, David Lean, Stanley Kubrick, and Andrei Tarkovsky. The worst of these tend to come from people who can’t find any other way to make the same point, so it’s understandable if the ultra-earnest title card at the start of Pan Nalin’s “ Last Film Show” inspires you to put your head between your knees and brace for a long two hours. Samuel Goldwyn Films releases the film in theaters on Friday, December 2.Ĭinephiles have long been conditioned to roll their eyes at mawkishly uplifting movies about the magic of cinema. ![]() Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. ![]()
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