The Lumiere Brothers. Eadweard Muybridge. David Lean. Stanley Kubrick. Andrei Tarkovsky. In the list of cinematic luminaries that prefaces Last Film Show, writer/director Pan Nalin should probably also give a nod to Giuseppe Tornatore.
After all, the Italian director’s era-defining love letter to the movies Cinema Paradiso is a clear ancestor to Last Film Show, the touching and enchanting story of a young boy’s relationship with the movies.
Not that nine-year-old Samay (Bhavin Rabari) is supposed to care about the silver screen. His father, Bapuji (Dipen Raval) sees a holier life for him as a brahmin – or basically, anything that isn’t following in his footsteps, selling tea alongside the railroad tracks in their small town in rural Saurashtra.
Last Film Show doesn’t simply have him fall in love with cinema: instead, the little picture house in the neighboring town is filled with elements that will appeal to this imaginative, rebellious young boy who tells stories from matchbox images, and lays out colored glass along the railway tracks, just so he can look at the world differently. That’s how his friendship with projectionist Fazal (Bhavesh Shrimali) feels organic, as he buys entrance to the booth so he can watch movies all day while the adult dines on the boy’s mother’s extraordinary cooking. Meanwhile those young eyes gorge themselves on the best of Bollywood and Tollywood: action films, religious epics, sweeping romances, historical dramas.
From here, Nalin tells a powerful story about the the joy of growth and the agony of change, all through the lens of a young child’s utter love of the flickering image. There’s a tender, boy’s own adventure element to Samay’s life as he absorbs movies into himself – not just the films, but the mechanics of the projector, the feel of celluloid, the stuttering sound of the shutter, and the way those silly little images can move an audience and reshape emotions. And his film is part of that tradition, in no small part due to the sumptuous cinematography of his longtime collaborator Swapnil S. Sonawane, who paints Samay’s youth with those rich colors that can only be found in the chemical haze of 35mm, or the spice-infused sauces that his mother (Richa Meena) creates in her kitchen, while his traditionalist father (Dipen Raval) tries to navigate his son’s emotional growth and the collapse of his world through the invasion of modernity.
Last Film Show is as visually intoxicating (the glimpses of vibrantly colored films, the sight of meals simmering in herbs so gorgeous that you’ll swear you’ll smell the aroma) as it is thematically rich. Everything is in transition, Nalin says, and often at a level that it’s impossible to defeat: and at no point does he use the death of celluloid as a metaphor for that change. Instead, that’s part of the change, an element of his life that Samay (and, it would seem, Nalin) sees transforming into new forms. The key, he suggests in this gorgeous and compassionate ode to the resilience of childhood, is never to lose sight of who you are.
Last Film Show
Texas Premiere
Indie Meme Film Festival April 14-24. Tickets and details at indiememe.org.
This article appears in April 15 • 2022.
