For the audience who were lucky enough to catch ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ as soon as it came out, this might sound like a nice trip down memory lane. For others, it might be a primer of sorts into an altogether unique genre of filmmaking. The crossover/cross-cultural phenomenon encompasses both feel good comedies and thought provoking dramas. Here’s a look at some films you’d want to catch, just to feel a little out of place, but to nevertheless, find yourself right back at home. As someone said, who cares about the destination? It’s the journey that counts.
‘Babel’: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu made a devastating film which marks the third chapter in the death trilogy. Sticking to his technique of fractured narrative, Inarritu tells many stories linked by a single incident. This time, language plays the villain as the inability to communicate, whether on the home front, or in a foreign land brings out the true colours of the denizens involved. ‘Nowhere in Africa’: This is one of those films that you can’t quite put your finger on. It centres on a refugee family of German-Jewish descent, who take shelter in a Kenyan farm during the 1930s. The laidback life of the farm might seem like a welcome change. But adaptation is a game that comes with its own challenges as the ties of the family are tested on all grounds. Shot languorously, the German feature is a contemplative piece that stands the test of time. ‘The Edge of Heaven’: Turkish wonderkid Fatih Akin gets under the skin of that nebulous concept called identity and makes us question our own ideas of it. Fatih’s film explores the lives of Turkish citizens living in Germany and Germans living in Turkey, their existential crisis playing out at all junctures. There are questions of generational and geographic divide, but it’s all expounded upon with compassion. ‘Lost in Translation’: Sofia Coppola’s wonderfully poignant film about two Americans battling loneliness and ennui in Tokyo was a runaway hit. Bill Murray’s aging actor and Scarlett Johansson’s vulnerable newly wed became the voice of a generation that was at a loss at understanding what they wanted from life. Rife with quote worthy dialogue and comedy, the tagline of the film said it all, ‘sometimes, you have to go halfway around the world to come full circle.’
