City Of Joy

In search of the most basic needs, the farming family of Hasari Pal (Om Puri), among countless others, migrates to Calcutta to escape a disastrous drought in Bihar, India's poorest state. Woefully unprepared and frightened, instead of work they find a foul, teeming metropolis of inhuman congestion. Meanwhile, in an unnamed American city, Dr. Max Lowe (Patrick Swayze) loses a child on the operating table. Abruptly fleeing his stressful but privileged position, he arrives in Calcutta seeking to find--or redeem--his soul. (Oddly enough, although he's chosen India rather than, say, Kenya or Brazil, Max has no idea that Indians do not kill, much less eat cows; understandably, hamburgers are nonexistent.) One night, Max naively but chastely gets drunk with a hooker, and is then assaulted and robbed by local thugs. The Pals are sleeping nearby on the street. Hasari nobly comes to the stranger's aid, though by logic he should have no desire to enter a brawl he cannot even see around the corner. Hasari takes Max to the clinic in the City of Joy, a poetically named slum of Indian untouchables, outcasts of society who exist in a wretched ward but where, in sharp contrast to the affluent communities of the world, people are generous and full of life.

CITY OF JOY is based on a fine book of the same name by Dominique Lapierre, which shapes real-life drama and the semi-fictional, the epic and the intimate, into a mosaic relevant to our times. Entirely absent from the film is the central, saintly Polish priest Stephan Kovalski, who made extraordinary physical and spiritual efforts to raise human dignity from the depths of squalor. He's transformed into Joan Bethal (Pauline Collins), the compassionate, dedicated but less devout head of the City of Joy clinic. When Joan saves Max from an angry policeman, he's drawn into the eddy that is the City of Joy. In a vivid scene, shot largely in available light, Max delivers the baby of a leprous mother. The grainy realism is more effective than greater production efforts made elsewhere. "If your heart is clean, nothing happens," Hasari's wife says to her spouse as she enters the lepers' hovel to assist Max. Later, this baby, underfed because his mother must sell part of the milk ration for rent money, subjects Max to a watery baptism, an impromptu moment that enriches the film with its innocence and humanity.

Max's confusion about his work at the clinic or in a life adrift clashes with Joan's insistence that he make a choice: his life, or real life, here in the City of Joy. She boils it down to three choices: Run; spectate; or commit. Max eventually commits, but his Western ways irk the local godfather, a fat, cynical creature who extorts from the poor in exchange for "protection." When the City of Joy builds a clinic for the lepers, at Max's urging the inhabitants refuse the requisite payment to the godfather. His goons pillage and kill until the graft is proffered to Ashoka (Art Malik), the godfather's lieutenant. Hasari works for the godfather as a rickshaw puller, a job which turns humans into beasts of burden who toil in deadly heat and air for a few daily rupees. His tuberculosis is typically fatal for the impoverished who cannot afford medicine. Worse, Ashoka takes away his rickshaw because, as a denizen of the City of Joy, he sided with his family and community, not his employer.

This loss of livelihood sparks a clash between Max and Hasari, whose only option now is to sell his blood for the few rupees that he, as the head of the house, must provide. The rituals of life--healing the endless waves of sick; celebrating the violent but cleansing monsoon; and the wedding of Hasari's daughter after much haggling over the dowry--are well observed. Justice is served upon Ashoka, Hasari defends his family and personal dignity, and the gold medallion which once hung around Max's neck serves a far more meaningful purpose. But the film is weakened by its flattened perspective, more inclined to self-centered peace of Western mind than the milieu of very complex Indian agony. Given its enormous production expenses, this film, ironically, could only be produced by a Hollywood studio and, as such, simplified. Still, CITY OF JOY is not so much to be criticized as admired for the virtue it so passionately displays. (Violence, adult situations.) leave a comment