This is a very good film overall. I will therefore skip on already provided here delights of cinemas paradisos.... However, what other reviewers didn't notice is that this visual masterpiece balances our delights in films with several statements - produced by the local film "expert", namely Fazal, the operator of a film projector in cinema "Galaxy" - that the films prime service is in the service of lies. Appropriately, the movie main character, a child who want to connect light and stories, is a consistent and consummate liar in the service of lies-bearing films - which leads him even to the stay in the juvenile house. Yet Samay does not stop - he will be lying further. Since Fazal is a Muslim and Samay is a Hindu one cannot but see delicate polemics between two religions concerning lies and its embellishments too. Fazal does not want to see more films.
This beautifully shot movie has certain fantastic elements: for example, it is hard to believe that a working film projector can be built by an elementary school pupil just from scrap metal. On the other hand, the most moving scene, of the death of the old projector and of the old film reels, has clear apocalyptic undertones - by fire these artificial stories are destroyed, and then they are reborn/reincarnated as cutlery and plastic jewellery. It may sound comic as you read it, but believe me, in cinema it will be a truly apocalyptic experience, thanks not only to cinematography and editing but to music, appropriately framing those scenes. In the end, constant associations of "light" and stories/movies together with the closing journey of fire & apocalypse conveys some religious, gnostic, or perhaps occult, ideas - like of the fight of Light with Demiurge, the god of matter. But is the Light a lie...?! The Question stays.
This beautifully shot movie has certain fantastic elements: for example, it is hard to believe that a working film projector can be built by an elementary school pupil just from scrap metal. On the other hand, the most moving scene, of the death of the old projector and of the old film reels, has clear apocalyptic undertones - by fire these artificial stories are destroyed, and then they are reborn/reincarnated as cutlery and plastic jewellery. It may sound comic as you read it, but believe me, in cinema it will be a truly apocalyptic experience, thanks not only to cinematography and editing but to music, appropriately framing those scenes. In the end, constant associations of "light" and stories/movies together with the closing journey of fire & apocalypse conveys some religious, gnostic, or perhaps occult, ideas - like of the fight of Light with Demiurge, the god of matter. But is the Light a lie...?! The Question stays.