{"id":11451,"date":"2011-02-10T21:44:19","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T05:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=11451"},"modified":"2011-02-10T23:03:48","modified_gmt":"2011-02-11T07:03:48","slug":"soul-of-sand-sidharth-srinivasan-2010-india-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=11451","title":{"rendered":"Soul of Sand (Sidharth Srinivasan, 2010): India"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Stacie Manifold<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at Metro 4 Theatre at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2011.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Soul of Sand<\/a> screened at this year’s film festival as part of the International Features genre.\u00a0 It is a film made in India but is a far cry from the Bollywood features we have seen recently with song and dance.\u00a0 Quite the opposite, this film focuses on a handful of characters living mundane lives almost in poverty and there is no happy ending.<\/p>\n

The film is written, directed and produced by Sidharth Srinivasan, an independent filmmaker based in New Delhi\/Mumbai.\u00a0 His first film was a short made in 2000 called The Tightrope Walker.<\/em> Srinivasan aims to make movies that are a little off the beaten path and draws his inspiration from work such as Chris Marker\u2019s legendary film \u201cLa Jetee\u201d a sci-fi film comprised entirely of still images with voice-over narration.\u00a0 In fact the second film Srinivasan made in 2001, one of India’s first digital feature films called DIVYA DRISHTI, was banned by the censor board owing to profanity and street lingo as well as the casual depiction of a love affair between two married men.\u00a0 At that time, the censors said that homosexuality was against Indian culture.<\/p>\n

The story of Soul of Sand revolves around Bhanu Kumar (played by Dibyendu Bhattacharya) and his wife Saroj Kumar (Saba Joshi) who live at a deserted mineral mine that Bhanu watches over as a guard.\u00a0 Various characters enter and exit their lives including a mysterious man who rides a motorcycle, carries a rifle and always keeps his face cloaked.<\/p>\n

When first watching the film, a few things jumped out at me that seemed to affect the movie in a negative way.\u00a0 First of all in any scene where someone happened to be killed, their murder was quite violent and gratuitous.\u00a0 For instance, an ax is lodged into a man’s neck and blood is squirting out the side of his neck in a three foot stream.\u00a0 These scenes were reminescent of comic book murders done in real life.<\/p>\n

There was also the masked man.\u00a0 Any time he appeared on screen, menacing music would play.\u00a0 He also kept his face covered except one time when it was revealed to an on-screen character but not the audience.\u00a0 You got the impression that his face was badly burned and scarred.\u00a0 His character portrayal reminded me of Darth Vader from Star Wars.\u00a0 Darth Vader’s face is mutilated, he always keeps his mask on and whenever he enters a scene that well-known soundtrack plays.<\/p>\n

I question the directors use of the cheesy horror-film style killings and Darth Vader spoof.\u00a0 The movie was otherwise serious and could have had a deep meaning that moved you.\u00a0 I wonder if the director felt the subject matter was so dark and heavy that comic relief was needed in this fashion.\u00a0 Although not one of my favorites seen at the festival, the film has it’s place in cinema and it’s nice to see a movie of this genera come out of India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Stacie Manifold.\u00a0 Viewed at Metro 4 Theatre at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2011. Soul of Sand screened at this year’s film festival as part of the International Features genre.\u00a0 It is a film made in India but is a far cry from the Bollywood features we have seen recently with song and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}