Jul. 24, 2005 - 8:57 am
i think Jill and i had been interested in this one ever since it won the Oscar for Best Documentary a few months back. somehow Netflix seems to have gotten them to release a special edition for them a bit early since Amazon says that the dvd doesn't come out until September. the menu screen of the dvd also had this strange little red Netflix logo on it which we've never seen before.
as i said, the movie is a documentary and is about a small group of children in India being taught photography by an American female photographer. she comes to really enjoy being around the children and begins worrying about their futures. since they are growing up in the red-light district of Calcutta, it is likely that all of the boys will become drug addicts and the girls will become prostitutes. the photographer then begins trying to use the photos of the children to make money to get them admitted into boarding schools.
this wasn't really the plot we were expecting from this movie. i mean, if you just heard the title alone, you'd expect to hear mostly about the brothels themselves. you'd expect it to be about girls that are born to prostitutes, and then grow up themselves and learn how to be prostitutes. this movie is only about being surrounded by that and trying to get out of it. don't get me wrong, it's still a great story, but i think the title of the film is quite misleading. if it helps at all, apparently the working title of the film was "The Kids of Sonagachi".
i think the main thing i really enjoyed seeing other than just how the story unfolded was the way that they showed the still photographs of the children. they presented them as something very glorious and made them the centerpiece of multiple shots. i guess they just gave a lot of focus to some of the better photos, which was lovely to see. i also liked it when we would be following one of the children with the video camera, see them take a picture, and then instantly be shown the photo that they took from their point of view. very cool stuff.