BEYOND THE KNOWN-WORLD
New Zealand/India, 2016, 102 minutes, Colour.
David Wenham, Sia Trokenheim, Emmanuelle Beart, Chelsie Preston Crayford, Emily Mc Kenzie.
Directed by Pan Nalin.
This is a New Zealand/ India coproduction, the director coming from India. The basic story comes from New Zealand, an ordinary couple, their daughter travelling away from home, disappearing, the parents going on a quest to India to find her. The couple is played by David Wenham and Sia Trokenheim.
The Indian contribution is the continued range of urban sequences, crowded cities, along with beautiful and exotic countryside, especially in the high mountain ranges.
The couple get official help in tracking down their daughter, print photos of her which they hold in the marketplaces, get some responses, some charlatans included. The main contacts are with similar young people travelling away from home, a freer life, drugtaking, living in communes. The young people are often hostile to the adult generation, refusing to give information, misleading.
The cooperative person is Louise, played by Emmanuelle Beart, who left home long ago, is out of contact with her family, but sympathetic to the couple.
Eventually, they find leads which lead them into the mountains, seeing their daughter riding with local tribesman, looking back – but not intending to return with her parents, finding a different life of her own.
1. A New Zealand/ India co-production? New Zealand story? Indian locations and atmosphere?
2. The title, exotic India and travellers and pilgrims, their search? Beyond the normal life? In the mountains and life of India?
3. New Zealand story, universal, at the airport, the separated parents, their daughter’s not arriving? Communications, concerned? Her age, growing up in New Zealand, travelled to India, taking money out of the bank, disappearing? The parents and their characters, Carl as hard and demanding, Julie finding him too hard? The decision to go to India?
4. The New Zealand perspective on India? So different from the Western world? Carl and his expectations, hard, judgements on Indians and their customs, demanding? Julie and her acceptance? Some further bonding between the two?
5. Travel in India, leads, further into the interior?
6. The young travellers, away from home, drugs, different lifestyle, religious and/or mystical dimensions? Travelling together, communes? The different nationalities? Hostile and preserving secrets? The different personalities?
7. Carl and Julie, the police, seeing money handed over, Carl and the issue of bribes? The printing of the photo, in the marketplaces, with the photos, different attempts to lead them on, fortunetellers, exploiters?
8. The encounter with Louise, her background, her time in India, separation from family, helping the couple, her contribution?
9. The young woman, arrested for drugs, her hostility, Carl trying to help, interrogations, her eventually giving information?
10. Going further into the mountains, the trek, the explanations about the money, the disappearance, Eva and her relationship with her parents, critical of her father?
11. The couple, seeing the tribesman, riding through the mountains, Eva with them her turning to look, her decision, staying in India, not returning with her parents?
12. A variation on the theme of the next generation alienated with their way of life, with their parents and expectations and demands – and finding a future in distant cultures like India?
