Wednesday, October 23, 2013

The Gods Must be Crazy - Movie Review

Watched this delightful movie once again and am amazed at how nicely it had been conceived and made. The stark contrast between the life of a bushman who lives in the Kalahari desert and has nothing, not even water to drink, and the modern man and his greed and his own peculiar set of problems are brilliantly brought out in this funny and introspective movie. These are things you never grasp when you are a youngster - then it was all about the Coke bottle and the laughter the antics raised. But now you realise how dreadful the contrast looks and how far we are from our true selves.

So we begin with a good look at the simple life of a bushman and his community with their minimum belongings, needs and wants. Not much in terms of clothes, possessions, food and even water, but the bushman and his community are happy and content and fine until one day a passing plane drops an empty bottle near the hero. He takes it to the community and they are all curious to find that the gods have given them something as beautiful as this. They find a million ways to use it. However its immense popularity breeds jealously, greed and violence, and prompts the hero to take it away and throw it off at the end of the world. Of course in his quest to find the end of the world he meets some regular (and some not so regular) humans and helps them along too, preventing a major military catastrophe as well, before he finds the end of the earth and gets rid of the evil bottle. Alls well and that ends well.

Superb stuff and one movie that probably is timeless because the contrast is good enough to show forever - modern man versus man in his true essence, a part of nature. Am I glad I saw it again.

No comments: