It is kind of a bummer that a lot of the conversation around Last Film Show has for the most part been revolving around the fact that the powers that be in India have decided to submit this film to the Academy for its Best Foreign Language category instead of the surprise hit audience favorite, RRR. Cause as it turns out, this movie, it’s pretty good. Not too long after Steven Spielberg released his own semi-autobiographical ode to the power of cinema with The Fabelmans, Indian filmmaker Pan Nalin taps into his own childhood experiences for his most recent film.
The film follows a young boy named Samay (Bhavin Rabari), who lives with his family in a small village in the state of Gujarat. Similar to Nalin, Samay doesn’t particularly enjoy going to school, and when he isn’t there, he is working at the local train station, helping his father, Bapuji (Dipen Raval), sell tea to the commuters coming in-and-out or just passing through. One day, Bapuji takes the family out to the city to watch a religious film in the cinema, according to him, the only kind of film that is suitable for “people like them.” This would be Samay’s first film.
When they go in side, and the lights go down, Samay quickly becomes enamored by the moving images. He steps onto the aisle, staring at the screen, turning back to look at the beam of light coming from the projector, and back to the screen. He later tells his father he would love to make movies, but that dream is shot down because it’s not meant for people like them, it’s a low profession where the industry doesn’t share their values. So, in secret, Samay skips school to watch films in the theater, and he soon develops a friendship with the projectionist, Fazal (Bhavesh Shrimali), who he makes a deal with by giving him his mom’s (Richa Meena) homemade cooking, so that he can hang out.
There’s a lot of repeating imagery you often see when it comes to movies about the magic of movies, and Last Film Show is no stranger to many of them. However, there is an aspect to the film’s reverence that does make it particularly unique among this subgenre. It is a love letter not just to movies, but the actual film, film projection, the mechanics and science behind light. Samay becomes obsessed with light, and proceeds to replicate the effect using scraps. It’s very fascinating to watch.
It combines the emotional element you often see, the way movies can move us, inspire us, but it also places a great emphasis on the tangibility of film, having that magic in your hands, in your control as you take the film, and get it to present on a screen of some kind with just a little bit of ingenuity and clever thinking. And it makes it all the more tragic as Nalin touches on the ever-evolving nature of cinema, and the way new technology steps over everything came before, sometimes affecting people in ways that aren’t just purely emotional.
Nalin wears his influences on his sleeve, even to the point of giving some a literal shout-out, but it doesn’t feel like a reference fest. There’s a solid balance between that nostalgic sentimentality and the bittersweet reality of the characters and their experiences. It helps that the cast is very strong across the board, each giving nuanced and grounded performances that work perfectly in tune with the earnest and meditative tone that the filmmakers are going for. And the dynamic between Rabari and Shrimali is terrific, bouncing off one another well, contrasting the boy’s curiosity with his cynicism. I also want to give a shout-out to Meena, who manages to convey so much without having a lot of actual dialogue.
Last Film Show would seem on the surface to be a pretty standard Cinema Paradiso riff, but there is more to what Pan Nalin is doing here. It’s a beautiful and at times haunting exploration of how a child sees and processes cinema. It is both playful and melancholic, capturing the lushness of childhood wonder but pulls back just enough as to not linger or fetishize the poverty that Samay’s family is in. Other thematic underpinnings like the caste system and the brutal nature of capitalism could be argued as not having as much attention in the story as they could have, but their presence still adds to the rich tapestry of the overall film. While I doubt this will be among the nominees come the next Oscars, I think this is still a wonderful film, one that is very much worth your time. There’s a part of me that would love the idea of seeing a film from every country that takes the premise of “a young child befriends a film projectionist,” and does what it wants with it because you’d get a different experience every time. Cinema unites, but it also highlights the specificities, the differences between us, and the very best of them do it in ways that encourage us to engage with those differences. Last Film Show tackles this very well, and it’s one that I think all lovers of film can connect with.
Last Film Show is currently playing in select theaters.