One of the great feature debuts, Mira Nair’s plunge into the world of Bombay’s street boys brings Dickensian overtones & texture, with echoes of OLIVER TWIST both broad & intimate, to its very different world. Startling right from the top, where, in a switch, a young boy finds the circus has run away from him, he hies himself off to the nearest big city (Bombay) in hopes of making enough money to get back to home & mother. Settled in as go-fer to pimps, madames, hookers & addicts in a poor neighborhood where’s he’s also ‘tea delivery-boy,’ he hardly has time to come up for air. With professional actors in the adult roles, and amateurs street kids as juveniles, Nair consistently lands in the sweet spot, molding a true ensemble team. And what a world of color, delight, terror & heartbreak she finds on the street and in the crowded tenement apartments where everything plays out. A few melodramatic episodes feel a bit pushed, but the whiplash sentiments are both painfully believable and crushing to onscreen characters & viewer alike. Nair never made anything finer.
DOUBLE-BILL: A documentary from Calcutta, BORN INTO BROTHELS/’04, is both similar & compelling.
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