Ocean of Pearls (2008) by Director Sarab Singh Neelam & Starring Omid Abtahi. A young Sikh surgeon, moves from Toronto to Detroit to take a position at a new transplant facility, leaving behind his family and Indian girlfriend.
Ocean of Pearls was better than I'd anticipated, time well spent!
Prior to seeing this film, my exposure to the culture of South Asians in films was limited to the James Bond Flick Octopussy (1983), The English Patient (1996) a most unpleasant movie with a Jewel of a Secondary Story in the Middle starring Juliette Binoche and Naveen Andrews and the CBC Movie Trilogy – Jinnah: On Crime (2002) featuring a Investigative Crime Beat Reporter.
While the film makers' state at the end of the film the actor cutting his hair is wearing a wig, the irony is that in a later scene we witness the actor's actual hairline is receding. This was one fact I would have preferred not knowing. I would have preferred to go on believing, albeit naively, that Sikhs don't suffer from Male Pattern Baldness. I wanted to go on believing they all had full heads of hair beneath their Turbans.
At any rate, film did cause me to look back at the History in India in order to identify the tragedy that the lead character's father endured as a child. I was already been aware of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919 and the wholesale slaughter of innocent Sikhs in 1984 following the Assassination of Indira Gandhi, but I was not aware of the estimate deaths between 200,000 to 1 Million from the resulting violence during the Partitioning of India in 1947, involving the relocation of 7 Million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.
Ocean of Pearls was better than I'd anticipated, time well spent!
Prior to seeing this film, my exposure to the culture of South Asians in films was limited to the James Bond Flick Octopussy (1983), The English Patient (1996) a most unpleasant movie with a Jewel of a Secondary Story in the Middle starring Juliette Binoche and Naveen Andrews and the CBC Movie Trilogy – Jinnah: On Crime (2002) featuring a Investigative Crime Beat Reporter.
While the film makers' state at the end of the film the actor cutting his hair is wearing a wig, the irony is that in a later scene we witness the actor's actual hairline is receding. This was one fact I would have preferred not knowing. I would have preferred to go on believing, albeit naively, that Sikhs don't suffer from Male Pattern Baldness. I wanted to go on believing they all had full heads of hair beneath their Turbans.
At any rate, film did cause me to look back at the History in India in order to identify the tragedy that the lead character's father endured as a child. I was already been aware of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919 and the wholesale slaughter of innocent Sikhs in 1984 following the Assassination of Indira Gandhi, but I was not aware of the estimate deaths between 200,000 to 1 Million from the resulting violence during the Partitioning of India in 1947, involving the relocation of 7 Million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.