This is the best documentary at the 77th Academy Awards. American female director Zena Brisk selects 8 children in the red light district of Kolkata, gives each of them a camera, teaches them to take pictures, and lets them become little photographers to photograph the world in their eyes.
The wet and crowded streets are full of prostitutes eager to pick up customers, the dark rooms are cluttered, the ground is overflowing with sewage, and there are slumped men lying on the dirty old beds... This is the red light district of Kolkata, there is no life here, there is only The survival of purpose, gambling, drug use, and prostitutes, other than this, people are afraid to avoid it. Even if there is a relationship, they should immediately disown it. In this context, there are the figures of those little photographers running and playing in their childhood.
I wonder, are some fates predestined? These children also dream of becoming teachers, doctors, architects... Director Zena teaches photography lessons to these children and takes them to the zoo to see hippos. She helped them connect to boarding schools, seek social help, and do whatever it takes to get them to live as normal children. It was as if everything was heading towards a happy ending.
However, after all, reality is different from movies and has no comforting function. The little girl puja in the film once held the trophy on the podium with the director and the director's name, but in the end, she still failed to get rid of the fate of becoming a prostitute. His mother wanted her back from the school the director had hired for her, and a year later, she was the head of the brothel.
In the end, she compromised with society.
No normal school is willing to accept the children of prostitutes. Once they walk out of the red light district, they are like criminals parading through the streets and being despised by others. People outside the red light district see them as the filthiest of aliens, invaders covered in viruses, animals that can be bullied... Anything can be, but only not human.
Outside the red light district, they're indifferent, they're not happy.
In this way, it is not difficult to understand why Puja finally succumbed to fate and became the same person as his mother and grandmother. The world outside is actually curious eyes and contemptuous gestures, but on the surface it is gentle and kind to her like a virgin, even a kind of superiority, hypocrisy, and pity.
Seeing violent prostitutes, drunk clients, and arrogant drug dealers since she was a child, puji was full of fear and fear, and she didn't want to be in such a crowd every day. But when puja really faces it, he is not afraid, because this is his most common destiny, and it is the most real existence that he can control. The scene of getting on the Oscar podium under the flash is just the most ridiculous and absurd dream.
It turns out that the people of the world are the most difficult to save. Real life never has Hollywood adventures and endings. What we consume is the emotion of a temporary foreign poverty story, but this emotion does not flow into our hearts.
View more about Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids reviews
