THE LITTLE REPUBLIC A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2003 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *
Anwar Jamal's THE LITTLE REPUBLIC (SWARAAJ) may be in color, but the characters couldn't be more black and white. The women are hard-working saints, and the men are uncaring beasts.
The story is set in the extremely remote village of Rajasthan, India, where water is the most precious commodity of all. We watch as the women are only able to partially their fill their jars with the trucked-in water. If this water is supposedly treated like gold, you'll wonder why the jars are placed six feet away from the spigot, which causes a large portion of the water to be wasted on the ground.
Although we are told that the local council has the machinery to dig a well in just two days, the women toil away with pickaxes digging a well by hand. After eight months of extremely hard labor, they finally strike water. The men couldn't care less about this event, and the women's request for a pipeline to carry this precious resource is ignored and ridiculed.
As cliché is piled upon cliché, one looks hard for something good to say about the picture. I'm down to this -- it's reasonably colorful and has some passable music in it. That's it.
THE LITTLE REPUBLIC runs 1:30. The film is in Hindi with English subtitles. It is not rated but would be a PG for mature themes and would be acceptable for any kid old enough to be able to read subtitles.
The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 27 to March 9, 2003.
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