Make up the first hour of this movie - and it is well worth the look at to get a feeling for the culture and people of Trinidad, at that time. The last 30-40 minutes are not as enchanting, but still end up tieing the story together. There is a certain quiet, resonating truth to this movie which crosses cultures, as the old-fashioned and the new fangled clash but ultimately resolve. Not too many movies about this culture, so you will probably not see many like it ... it is not a masterpiece but it is both touching and uplifting at times, as well as beautifully filmed and acted - let me know what you think ...

Adaptations of novels are _always_ risky business. But this movie takes the cake.I thought Mercahnt Ivory would have done better.What kills the movie is the casting and the dialog delivery: the pronunciation. (What else remains?) Most of the actors look too polished for the roles they play; and they are: they are part of a sophisticated international cast that regularly starts in many "Raj" movies (except Om Puri).They are used to suave, clipped British accents. And that is painfully obvious when they try to speak in the rural Hindi-Trinidadian mix.The book does not show them that way. I had imagined them looking like people from the region I have seen in India which features typical of people from that region (you get rare glimpses of such people, esp. at Ganesh's wedding). And speaking like them when they speak English.Ganesh, The Great Belcher (Zohra Sehgal) et al can hardly conceal their clean, sophisticated inflections On Puri does a poor job overlaying the Bhojpuri-accented English onto his native Punjabi drawl. Such a fine actor...I just kept wishing he speak in Hindi instead...just end the torture...The results are atrociously comic. On top of all that confusion the actors try to put on an Indian, Apu-the-character-from-Simpsons style of Indian accent. Ugh!Gawd! I could not see the images in my mind be butchered by the on-screen characterizations...A western viewer may not observe all these fine points but they were too obvious to me...rather painfully so...

The look and feel of this film is of a "real" story, based at least somewhat on facts, although it seems rather too preposterous to be real. We are presented with a semi-literate, backwater Hindu cracker, in love with "books" the way people of limited literacy tend to be, desiring nothing so much as to write some himself, but with barely enough talent to produce more than grandiose pamphlets. Similarly, with no actual training or experience to draw from, he imagines himself to be a gifted masseur. Evidently in the more rustic districts of Trinidad, where superstitions run high, people were greatly impressed by such pretensions, and he does rather well for himself. Soon he is holding "court" on his potato patch, with lines of rural boobs waiting their turn to be blessed or have their marital quarrels adjudicated. The film has a Hindu flavor of the American Evangelical movement of the 1920s, somewhat squalid and shabby intellectually. It is presented in retrospect form the point of view of a young fellow who experienced a "spiritual healing" from the pundit in his childhood. The lettered rube is therefore treated with the greatest respect, as though nearly a Gandhi or Nehru! It is exceedingly well done technically and artistically, if only the story was less peculiar and doltish.

I have not read the V.S. Naipaul book from which this film was adapted, but I surmise that, like other early Naipaul work (A House For Mr. Biswas comes to mind), the book must have had a light, amusing touch. The film certainly does...I found it winning and delightful throughout. The acting was consistently fine, the Trinidadian ambiance was evocative, and the plot moved along wonderfully. Between the rather unappealing title, the no-name cast (well, almost no names that American audiences will recognize), and a total lack of slam-bang action, I'm afraid that the likelihood is that you will have a hard time finding this in any theater already. If you can find it, you ought to check it out. If not, look for it as a rental soon. But don't pass it by.