Desh: A film review

As promised, a review of this morning's cinematic entertainment. Although, to be fair, I do judge Nepali films on very different criteria to most other films. For example, the more ridiculous or inexplicable a plot point is the better. Need to move the film along? Suddenly the lead character has a little sister who dies a horrible death. Two characters make inadvertent but potentially lustful eye contact? Time for a song! Crazy dancing and multiple scenic locations for no narrative reason added for free.

My summary of the plot is potentially not very accurate, given my Nepali is not quite up to the more intricate parts of the film.

A young boy is traumatised when is father is killed at war (the death scene eerily reminiscent of early Monty Python, although I don't think it's a deliberate homage). It is his grandmother who leads the child to follow the way of the pen and not the sword (in some very transparent visual cues) and so he becomes a journalist (and thankfully we miss a large chunk in the middle of his life and find he has grown up to become Rajesh Hamal, god of Nepali cinema.

Now, I'm a little hazy here. It appears that he is a journalist, but he spends a lot of time hanging out with university students. I'm not sure if they're trying to pass an indeterminately middle aged man off as a university student but if they are then having him carry a leather satchel at all times (all times!!)is not very convincing.

Anyway, he hangs out with Uni students, who are all apathetic about Nepal and plan to go overseas to study. He incites some kind of national pride in them, but they get a little carried away and are misdirected by some villains (you can tell they're villains, their eyes are funny). The students incite a bandah (this is one of the more believable plot points).

The bandah is a success! But the younger sister of the main student leader is killed after they're unable to get her to a hospital because of said bandah. This is the price the student leader has paid for his misdirected enthusiasm! But it's ok, the journalist is here with some kind of dossier, which they use against the villains (what's in the dossier? I have no idea, but the over is red and has Ganesh on it...). The students become reporter to out the villains, and then like all good Nepalis, form a political party. At a massive rally for their new party Rajesh Hamal is shot in the stomach in as assassination plot. Does he go to hospital? No, he hides the wound with his ever present satchel until it's too late and his friends must leave him to fall over and die, but not before his nephew appears so he can pass on the pen to the future generation, thus ensuring his legacy, and violently collapsing about six seconds before the credits.

In between there's a love story, some dancing, and a boy sets an evil man on fire and kills him in retribution for the loss of his family and no one reports this matter to the authorities. It all makes perfect sense...

Check out the poster, and a music clip from the film here.