After the epidemic was released, cinemas continued to welcome excellent releases, and recently, an Indian high-scoring film "Indian English" was released in theaters.
The Douban score is as high as 8.1. Friends who like Indian movies must not miss it.
The film has caused a sensation in many international film festivals such as Toronto, Berlin, and San Diego.
The Times of India praised the film as the best Indian film of the year and gave it 4 stars.
The audience voted second place for best feature film at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
India's "Filmfare Award", "Zee Cine Award" for Best New Director.
As the comeback of the Indian film goddess Siri Daiyu after many years of defiance of the big screen, some people even compared it to another amazing Indian film "Three Fools".
Dedicated to all women
The plot tells the story of Shahi, an Indian housewife, who makes a good dish, and her Indian dessert "Little Round Boy" is amazing to everyone, and can even let her cook and sell herself, doing a small business, which is the only source of achievement in the regular and repeated daily life.
Unfortunately, in the eyes of her family, she is just a yellow-faced woman who is good at cooking and has no knowledge, and her English dishes are often ridiculed by her husband and daughter. Unexpectedly, she had to go to New York, USA, to help prepare for her niece's wedding.
The trip to the United States forced her out of her comfort zone, and an accident that brought her to the brink of physical and mental collapse led her to enroll in an English course, which not only opened her eyes, but also led her to regain her confidence.
The simple and clear story, in the form of Hollywood and Bollywood's usual three-act drama has been choreographed, and there is a little humor in the touching elements, although the movie time is more than two hours, but the plot is smooth and simple, so it is a good entrance.
The title of the film is "Indian English", and the plot is also based on Shahi's four-week English learning course, but as Chen Junrong, an international marketing officer of the Golden Horse Film Festival, said, under the skin of this inspirational light comedy, it tells about the conflict and dialectic of multicultural integration, and women's self-growth.
This is director Glisender's first film, and she points out that the film was inspired by her own mother and shows the transformation of women, and she also hopes to dedicate the film to all women.
"Cooking for men is an art, cooking for women is an obligation"
India's own colonial history has given the country a complex ethnic complex and cultural background.
Even in India, English proficiency is a must-have in business, so on the school's parents' day, Indians speak English, and Shahi's daughter is even more humiliated because her mother speaks Hindi. The strength of English and European and American culture became more and more obvious after coming to the United States, which led to Shahi's decision to enroll in English classes.
Interestingly, in addition to her, there are 6 other classmates in Shahi's English class: a computer engineer in South India, a Pakistani taxi driver, a Japanese hair stylist, a Mexican nanny, an African gay boy, and a chef from France.
These people are often considered "second-class citizens" and "blue-collar workers" in the United States. But are these people really more "inferior"? Or is it just being arbitrarily labeled because of the color of the skin, or the language spoken?
A Pakistani driver classmate pointed out, "Each of us has a specialty, better than the teacher, if it were not for poor English, we would not look at faces like this!" ”
And even the only white teacher is also set as a non-mainstream "gay" status, and even "second-class citizens" can joke arbitrarily, frivolously ridiculing the teacher who broke up with his boyfriend with stereotypes: anyway, what is sad and sad when a gay person sees one loves one!
But Shahi pointed out with empathy, heterosexuality looks at gay people feel abnormal, gay people look at heterosexuality why not? Although we are different, the feeling of heartache is the same.
Although Shahi is in a middle-class Indian family and relatively highly educated, her husband still takes women's contributions for granted, not only saying that she was "born to be a little round boy", but also hoping that she will stop selling homemade desserts and make them for him alone.
In the film, Sha Xi's sentence, "Men cooking rice is an art, women cooking is an obligation" I don't know how many housewives have a heart.
The disrespect of the child, the snub of the husband, and the confidence that cannot be obtained in the family are slowly recovered after the English class begins: the small business of selling small round children is described by the teacher as "entrepreneur (entrepreneur, entrepreneur)"; French classmates were even more fascinated by her serious and charming style.
After the spiritual connection, language seems to become something outside the body, and it is no longer important. When she chats with her French classmates, they often speak their native languages, but the two can communicate without hindrance, which is particularly ironic compared to her husband who speaks the same language but is relatively speechless, or her daughter who speaks ill words.
New courses and new relationships break the routine of boredom and act like a door to a new world. But Shashi is not carried away by these praises and ambiguities, she knows that it is all external freshness, as she says at the end of the film, "When you don't love yourself, new things always seem better, but that's not true." ”
In a life full of frustrations and grievances, English classes are like a redemption. It may be easier to give up everything as it was, but the director does not let Shahi escape, but gains a sense of achievement through English lessons, and re-feels love and respect through a new encounter.
After going all out, finding that hard-working, firm, and confident self-confidence, and truly identifying with yourself, you can truly love yourself.
Find yourself
For ordinary people, the sense of need for family members is usually the highest, but because of the illusion derived from habits, our sense of existence for family members is often not only unable to be equated with the sense of need, but even seriously underestimated.
This is exactly what Shahi is in her situation, she is affectionate and hard to give to her family, but her family's feelings and understanding of this part only reflect a mother and a wife, not Shahi. As a result, the family enjoyed Shahi's role as mother and wife, but did not necessarily respect it appropriately.
The climax of the movie is that when the bride asks Shahi to speak, Shahi, who was originally a little hesitant and uneasy, resolutely got up to give a speech when her husband habitually got up immediately and said that she was not good at language and could not meet the request.
It was like the final speech she had been prepared for, the words about self, about the mutual support and respect between her family, the heartfelt desire and emotion, touched everyone present, and also made her husband and daughter ashamed.
What I want to believe is that from that moment on, Shahi's sense of self-worth was finally able to take root in her own strength. I also hope that audiences and friends who like this movie can see themselves and see the first female characters around them, who are not only mothers, daughters, wives, but also an independent individual.