March 23–30, 2000

movie shorts

Such a Long Journey

The third film in The Shooting Gallery’s series of festival favorite films, Toronto-based Sturla Gunnarsson’s Such a Long Journey is adapted from Rohinton Mistry’s best-selling novel, and chronicles the evolution of Gustad Noble (Roshan Seth). A Parsi bank clerk living with his wife Dilnavaz (Soni Razdan) and children in Bombay on the eve of India’s 1971 war with Pakistan, Gustad means to do the right thing but becomes enmeshed in an old friend’s (Naseeruddin Shah) request to launder money for the Research and Analysis Wing of India’s Secret Service, working to liberate Bangladesh. Mediated through the mysterious Ghulam (Om Puri), the request — and the many difficulties it causes — reorient Gustad’s conservative understanding of family, tradition, spirituality and national pride. The film beautifully captures Gustad’s fragmenting experience, as his son (Vrajesh Hirjee) refuses to go to college, his young daughter catches malaria, and his home — specifically the courtyard where he lives — is threatened by municipal road-widening efforts. Most impressively, the movie presents Gustad’s mostly unsentimental journey as it is shaped by complex secondary characters: Razdan and Hirjee are wonderful, as are Ranjit Chowdry as a pavement artist and Kurush Deboo as a young retarded man whom Gustad looks after.

—Cindy Fuchs