Hotel Salvation

[qatsi]

Last night I went to see Hotel Salvation at Reading Film Theatre. Daya, the old man of the family, announces he believes it is his time to die and wants to do so in Varanasi; his middle-aged son Rajiv feels obliged to accompany him on this quasi-pilgrimage, although it means setting aside his high-pressured middle-class job for a set of religious reasons he seems quite ambivalent about. To me, all the cultural aspects of the film were foreign and exotic, so it's quite possible I missed things, but it seemed that the main focus was on familial relationships - and especially conflicts - across the generations, friendships in old age, and the dissonance of development in modern India. Obviously, from the theme it's clear there aren't going to be many comical moments, though Navnindra Behl gives a spirited performance as the uplifting character Vimla, the elders taking marijuana-laced milk drinks are like something from Ab Fab, and the scene with Rajiv's low-bandwidth video call back home from the Internet cafe is farcical (though hardly uncommon, even in the West, a few years ago). Rajiv's office location looks quite similar to that depicted in The Lunchbox, a computer screen on the desk with files and files of paperwork on the shelves behind, which makes me think it's quite generic. Varanasi is made to look picturesque and romantic in some respects, but it's definitely shabby and third-world, and Rajiv is quite uncomfortable there. A thoughtful film.