Worth: $15.50
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Cast:
Adil Hussain, Lalit Behl, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Navnindra Behl, Palomi Ghosh
Intro:
...bittersweet blend of sweet humour with moving characters is not only effective...
Death is a complex subject, often used in film as the inciting incident: someone close to the main character will die, setting the hero up for their big journey and creating the emotional arc. But what if death was the goal? The journey in itself? Shubhashish Bhutiani explores this idea in his new film Hotel Salvation.
Hotel Salvation follows Rajiv (Adil Hussain), a man whose father Daya (Lalit Behl) decides out of the blue that he is ready to die. Sceptical about his father’s decision, Rajiv leaves his family and job to follow his father to the Holy City of Varanasi, checking themselves into a hotel for others who are awaiting ‘salvation’.
For such an emotional film, Hotel Salvation has no right to be as funny as it is, with Daya’s good-natured wit and sweet relationship with granddaughter Sunita (Palomi Ghosh) earning more than a few chuckles. But at its heart the film is a deep drama as Rajiv learns the truths of death, opening himself up to the idea of beauty within loss and learning to accept that not only is his father close to death, but wants to die. And as he navigates this environment where people come to die, meeting the remarkable other residents of the hotel and their curious priest, he must come to terms with Daya’s determination to make his own choices about his life, and how this may inspire the rest of his family to make their own decisions, too.
Bhutiani’s interesting blend of sweet humour with moving characters is not only effective, but necessary, and the film is never allowed to be melancholy, only bittersweet. The bright, lively celebrations full of colour, and little moments of fun that Rajiv, Daya and their family have, remind us of the joy in the world – after the most heartbreaking scenes, their family relationship and the friends that Daya makes proves that death comes after a good life.
As father and son, Adil Hussain and Lalit Behl play good cop, bad cop; cynical of his father’s beliefs, the son begrudgingly goes along to Hotel Salvation, but beneath this Hussain so deftly conveys Rajiv’s fear of change and the unknown. Behl, on the other hand, is never afraid of emotion; his honesty with Rajiv, Sunita (Palomi Ghosh) and new friend Vimla (Navnindra Behl) is raw but satisfying, as his whole life comes to a head.
Through his wonderful characters and quiet but powerful storytelling, Bhutiani infuses his film with the idea that many of us have trouble coming to terms with: that life is to be celebrated, and death might not just be the end, but maybe part of the journey, or even the beginning.
