Oct. 03, 2012 - Issue #885: Fall Style 2012
Kumaré
And that's where things got complicated. And where Gandhi's film about his hoax, simply titled Kumaré, gets more interesting than it initially seems, shifting away from a Borat-like impersonation stunt designed to send-up gullible Americans and changing into a deeply sympathetic examination of the varieties of spiritual hunger that linger in the modern psyche. The fact that so many folks—some of whom could be deemed as flaky, some simply young, some simply in a great deal of pain, some obviously intelligent, competent, socialized professionals—could project so much of their desires for guidance onto someone so utterly, almost transparently phony, becomes something greater than a sociological statistic to chuckle over while scanning the back of Harper's. Guilt-ridden and trying to make the best of an increasingly uncomfortable situation, Gandhi-as-Kumaré tries to boil down all of his teachings to the single notion of finding the guru within you. You'll have to watch Kumaré to see how it all works out, but I will tell you that the filmmakers seemed unprepared for everything that would transpire. Ultimately the coverage seems to be emphasizing the wrong themes, and there's a paucity of material that really interrogates Gandhi's own life and motivations and the more complicated, messy aftereffects of his experiment. Still, the film is captivating, often very funny and absolutely worth seeing for what it attempts to document: Gandhi's story is truly amazing, and the people he befriends along his path to anti-smugness are each fascinating in their own right.
Metro Cinema at the Garneau
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