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City of Joy
Max Lowe is a Houston surgeon who has grown weary of the bureaucracy of American medicine. When he loses a patient on the operating table, Max impulsively decides to leave America and travel to India in the hope of finding himself. Not long after he arrives in Calcutta, Max is attacked by a group of thugs and left without money or a passport.
1992 · Directed by Roland Joffé · 132 min · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 6 frames
Tagline
He was a man who couldn't care less... until he met a man who couldn't care more.
Plot
Hazari Pal is a rural farmer who moves to Calcutta with his wife Kamla and three children in search of a better life. The Pals do not get off to a good start: they are cheated out of their rent money and thrown out on the streets, and it is difficult for Hazari to find a job to support them. However, the determined family refuses to give up and eventually finds its place in the poverty-stricken city.
Meanwhile, at the other end of Calcutta, Max Lowe, a Houston surgeon distraught after the loss of a young patient, has arrived in search of spiritual enlightenment. However, he encounters misfortune as soon as he arrives. After being tricked by a young prostitute, he is roughed up by thugs and left bleeding in the street without his documents and valuable possessions.
Hazari comes to Max's aid and takes the injured doctor to the "City of Joy," a ghetto populated with lepers and poor people that becomes the Pals' new home and the American's home-away-from-home. Max spends a lot of time in the neighborhood, but he does not want to become too involved with the residents because he is afraid of becoming emotionally attached to them. However, he is soon coaxed into helping his new-found friends by a strong-willed Irish woman, who runs the local clinic.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Mark Medoff
- Written by: Dominique LaPierre
- Cinematography: Peter Biziou
- Edited by: Gerry Hambling, Hervé de Luze
- Music: Ennio Morricone
- Produced by: Roland Joffé, Jake Eberts
Cast
- Patrick Swayze as Max Lowe
- Om Puri as Hazari Pal
- Pauline Collins as Joan Bethel
- Shabana Azmi as Kamla H. Pal
- Ayesha Dharker as Amrita H. Pal
- Art Malik as Ashok Ghatak
- Nabil Shaban as Anouar
- Suneeta Sengupta as Poomina
- Shyamanand Jalan as Ghatak - Godfather
- Rudraprasad Sengupta as Chomotkar
Production
- Country: France, United Kingdom
- Language: English
- Studios: Lightmotive, Pricel
- Budget: $27,000,000
- Box office: $14,683,921
- Themes: hope, leprosy, india, calcutta
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