4.989999 starsIn a world where boundaries are rigidly defined, two wildly different women tentatively cross them in this story that focuses on their budding romance in apartheid South Africa. One (Sheetal Sheth) is a taxi-driving, café-owning rebel; the other (Lisa Ray) is a devoted mother and wife. Both learn lessons about themselves and their lives in their journey toward each other in this film from novelist-turned-director Shamim Sarif.
Cast: Lisa Ray, Sheetal Sheth, Parvin Dabas, Nandana Sen, Grethe Fox, David Dennis, Bernard White, Colin Moss, Amber Rose Revah, Rajesh Gopie, Natalie Becker
Director: Shamim Sarif
I am going to start with an excerpt from a New York Times review:
"Directed by Shamim Sarif and based on her novel of the same title, “The World Unseen” never begins to tap the talent at its disposal. Prim and uninvolving, the sputtering attraction between Amina and Miriam plays out as an opera of eyes: demure and downcast versus flirty and direct. Angry white policemen interrupt occasionally to push someone around, but it’s difficult to care about characters drawn so thinly that they’re almost transparent."
Ok...so I can't really disagree about the fact that the characters are drawn "thin" but you can avoid this. How?!? Read the book. The book is so wonderful. You fall in love with the characters...you begin to imagine what they are feeling. So why is this not achieved in the movie? It's length. The movie is only 90 minutes long. If the film had 30 or 45 additional minutes, the movie may have been perfect.
As I was watching the first half of the movie I consistently was thinking "are they not going to show that part?" There were so many good parts of the book that were not included in the movie. However, the are many many good scenes of the movie. Most of the funny/thoughtful one-liners were included in the movie. Also, there were a couple scenes that were not in the book...mostly scenes involving the feelings of Amina and Miriam. My hypothesis: many movie goers have short attention spans; they want to see a movie that is relatively fast paced.
Why the book is better than the movie: Readers are different than viewers...you are reading the words, imagining the scenes, and even putting yourself in the story. As you turn the pages, you are investing more and more of yourself in the characters.
Overall recommendation: read the book...then watch the movie
On a more serious note...I wanted to talk about Lisa Ray a little bit.
Lisa ray is a Canadian actress. Her father is Indian and her mother is Polish. You would probably know her from Water (an excellent film- watch it if you haven't already). On June 23, 2009 she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare cancer of the white blood cells. Throughout her fight she wrote a blog. After a stem cell transplant, she announced that she was cancer free in April.
Watch this video (if you want)
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