 You know why chickens are so funny? Why? I'm a chicken! And you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and more juicy content. Thanks for watching, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe if you haven't liked, button! I see you're having a breakfast at Champions. No, yeah. Yeah. Pop-tarts. I hadn't eaten anything like five minutes before this, and I was like, oh shit. Because you get hungry. We exert a lot of energy. We do. It's all the juicy content that we exert. It is. It's all the juiciness that we exert. You need to replace the juice. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. With pop-tarts. Yep. What kind, by the way? I saw there's a little, was it strawberry? No, it's the berry blast. Oh. It's like the old school. Multi-sprinkle top. I don't know if there's any sprinkles on it. So you should be crashing about halfway through our filming. No. No? You don't get a sugar high and then a sugar crash? No. No? ADHD doesn't work that way. That's all what this is about. Oh, that's one of the benefits. Yeah. Oh. We knew. You know, Adderall's basically just pure caffeine. I did not know that. Really? Which is why somebody like you would take it. It's like speed. Got it. And somebody like me, it's an incredible downer, but it helps you focus. Wow. And that's why coffee is also a partial substitute that you can have for ADHD. That helps. Yeah. So it works in an opposite way. Mm-hmm. Wow. That's crazy, right? I didn't know that. Anyways, that's what this is about. No. We'll go back to class tonight. Hi! You little shithead. What's your favorite Bengali film? Shitheads. That's one of my favorite jokes. Yeah. Anyways, but we're doing a Bengali classic. Yep. Movie review. There you did. You did your thing. There you go. Thank you. The 1957 Bengali film, Kabuliwala. Close enough for hands. It means like your hands on it. It's fruit seller or something? I think so. Fruit seller. Yeah. My wife was here. She'd tell us. We're going to get to obviously some Bengali classics, but also some non-Sachajit Rai. Non-Sachajit Rai. Even though we love Sachajit Rai and we'll still watch it, all his stuff. Surprised to us, there's other filmmakers from Bengal other than him. Who knew? I thought he was the only one. He is. Yeah. He is the Bengali industry. That's true. Even still. I mean, he might be actually. Who knows? I don't know. But anyways, so yeah, we wanted to get to some that weren't Sachajit Rai and some Bengalis recommended a few and I gave it a list. And then I asked Indrani as well. I was like, do you know any of these? And she was just like, oh yeah, I know quite a few of those. She knew this one really well. Yeah, she knew this one as well. So I was like, oh, let's do this one. It was really short for a classic Indian film. Real quick. So yeah, so this would be 100% spoiler view if you haven't watched it. It's on YouTube even. With subs. And other places as well. I'm sure you can get it different places in India as well. But yeah, there's actually on YouTube, which is crazy. There's actually a lot of Indian films that are fully on YouTube. Just fully loaded there. Which I find absolutely crazy. I do too. But. So this would be 100% spoiler view if you haven't watched it. Please go watch it and come back. Rick, your original thoughts of the classic Kabuliwala. It looks and feels much older than 1957. It does. It feels like it's in the era of chaplain and the little rascals. It looks like it was made right as the advent of sound came into play. It does, yeah. I'm also very grateful that it seems that virtually every classic we've ever seen from the Bengali film industry is sync sound. Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, I think so. So I, obviously, a personal connection. I was watching this with my Bengali wife, who she was singing some of the childhood songs. And she realized that one of the lines in the film, she were watching it. And she said, so that's where my dad and my uncle got that from. I never realized it was from this movie. I said, what? They used to always say there was an elephant in the bag. Oh. They used to always joke about the fact that if she asked what was in the bag, they would say there's an elephant in the bag. And she didn't know the reference until we re-watched it. Yeah, I figured there was quite a few references. But I really liked it. I actually, it's already been cold and rainy and winter, which is my least favorite time of the year. My favorite. And this movie's story didn't help me. Which just shows you that I cared about the guy. Yeah. So I really liked it. But man, I'm sure you love the ending. I just hated the ending. And I'm so sad when this thing was over. I still don't like it. But that's a good sign. That's a good sign. It means I like the movie. I enjoyed the ending. I sat there like this. She said, what? I don't like it. She said, Corbin's going to love it. Yeah, I know he is. Thank you for not telling me what's going to happen. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. I would like. He has to leave his daughter and be away from her. Then he has to deal with mean ladies as he's trying to connect with the little girl that reminds him of his daughter. He's just a sweet guy. He ends up in prison. The girl he connected with forgets him. And then the daughter, he's hoping to go back and see. I promise you, I promise you she's dead. Oh yeah, that's what I was hoping. I was actually hoping that he'd get there and she's dead. Oh, it's inevitable. He's sad. The only ray of hope is that journey back home. I'm going to see my little girl again. No, no, no. She's long gone. No one remembers you. Your life's over. Goodbye. Corbin's kind of film. Aren't you usually kind of the optimist though? She was there. She was sick when she was six years old. She was sick. He got a letter that she was sick. He was going home to be with her rushing to get home because she might die. I promise you she's dead. I know. I loved it. Yeah, I really enjoyed this film. I loved his character. The character was so, you could easily root for him. There was a lot of deep messaging in this film about certain things that are universal and still relevant today of how people treat immigrants and what they think about them and the bad things they think just because they are immigrants sometimes and it's just still extremely relevant today. People just for the longest time have not liked foreigners coming into their country and they always suspect them of being the bad people. And so there was that element. Also the element of, wow, times have changed, huh? Can I come and hang out with your daughter? Nope. I know you cannot. Please go away and stop talking to my daughter and taking her away from the park, you creep. Very different times. I realized that. It just makes you realize how if somebody, even if it was a nice person, a neighbor even, right? Right. You trusted and they came and took your daughter to spend time with her at the park away from the person that was what? Yeah, you would literally beat the living shit out of it. Yeah, you'd still wonder what the heck is going on. Andrani said those very words. She said, boy, it was a different time. Different time. Even when I was a kid. Different time. It was a different time where you could go, for example, your kid, we were, when I was 10 years old, it was normal on a Saturday morning to eat breakfast and go out and be gone until lunch and then eat lunch and then be gone. And the rule was just be back before dark. My mom had no idea where I was from noon to 7 p.m. No clue before cell phones, before anything. Her 10 year old is in van eyes just with his friends doing something. Such a different time. Yep. Yeah. So there was a lot of moments in this like him calling this little girl baby and like all this stuff. I'm like, obviously that's not the intent of this. Not at all. For me it was very endearing. No, it was. That was the intention. It wasn't endearing, but you realized since it's now 2023, I was like, if this was made now, that'd be really creepy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What he's doing. You could make it now and work, but you'd have to change a lot of the story. A lot. But yeah, his character. Sorry, I didn't introduce everything here. Yeah. It's directed by Tapansina. If we're pronouncing that correctly. He also wrote the screenplay, but I believe it was. It was from a story. It took our story. Yeah. His composer is Ravi Shankar. Ravi Shankar. And it reminded me of the Opu when it started. I thought that's got to be Ravi Shankar. And then our main guy is... Chabi Biswas. Chabi Biswas, yeah. Who is a Bengali screen legend. Yeah. So let's talk about him, obviously, because he's the film, right? Yeah. And his old character. His character was so extremely sweet. And you just easily rooted for him immediately. Such expressive eyes. Yeah, he's just the nicest guy. He wants to help people. He misses his daughter. Who can't relate to that. Yeah. Especially if you have kids. Exactly. And even though the time difference, you're like, oh, he sees this little girl and this girl. And he wants to be able to spend time with her and talk to her and have hope that she's still alive. And everybody, no matter how mean to him, unless you call him a thief, then he's going to stab you. But everybody else, his response to them is, God bless you. Even when she forgets him, she leaves. And the parents say, you know, get out of here. But his response is, God bless you. I just... My heart broke for the guy. Yeah. And it's one of those things like how many times just like the story... You also notice how mean in old films, old Indian films, how mean people are to their help. Oh my stars. There was a point where the mom, it was a third or fourth time where the mom was saying what she was saying. I said, well, she's a bitch. But it's like throughout a lot of old Indian cinema. Like obviously, I guess it was just the culture and whatever, but it's like, God, you're so mean to this poor person who's literally you're employed to help, they're employed to help you. Why are you so mean? It's the same thing for so long and even probably still. Just the standard format for teaching was to be mean to the kids. It's a cultural thing of the time. But especially when you consider cast system and the fact that most help is going to be... I mean, you're going to talk to them as an upper cast to talk to a lower cast. But yeah, the universal thing of obviously, the thing that stuck with me with this is how foreigners or immigrants in any country really are treated usually because they're different, they're not your people. And so they're presumed a lot of times to be thieves and criminals and all this kind of stuff. Obviously, the help immediately accused him of being like this other person who took your child and sold him into. And being... There was no evidence of that? Yeah, Andrani pointed out to me, it wasn't just the fact that he was Afghani, which was in and of itself enough to be everything that you're talking about, but the fact that he was an Afghani fruit seller made him, from the people's perspective in Calcutta, he would be comparable to a gypsy. Just this kind of coming and going, you don't know of what their intentions are. So there's already this ingrained sense of skepticism toward the guy, which makes the dad all the more gracious in his acceptance of him and recognizing at this one dad's heart to another dad's heart. But that's where the fact that he's this big man who's not Indian and also has this gypsy kind of thing, even though he's morally a very, very sound guy, there's all of that initial skepticism of we're gonna judge the book by its cover. And I just, yeah, because that's such a universal thing now that happens, obviously in any country, but obviously here in America, obviously if there's somebody from the Middle East or if there's somebody from Mexico or South America or something, not obviously we're in LA, very accepting here, but if you're like in a certain part of the country, it's more prevalent where you go back to where you came from. There's certain parts of the country that if a guy walked in with one earring and his left ear he'd be looked at like he's, you know, hey, what are you doing here? So it's just a universal thing that unfortunately in 2023 we're still dealing with it. She's just so sad. But I thought his performance was really great. He was totally endearing, totally believable, totally like you loved the character and you were rooting for him. I was like, I bet his daughter's dead in the end. I wanted them to not be dead, but I just assumed she was. Which is as much as I dislike it, that's one of the great things about the film is that it's honest about the realities of life, that life is often not fair, that life is not fair. But even in the midst of unfairness there's people that you always, there's always still hope, there's always still belief, there's always still dream. I don't know about you, but one of my favorite moments and when it happened I turned and drawn and she looked at me and she said, my baby, because I was getting really sad when it turned out that that piece of paper he's been looking at was his daughter's handprint, that's one of the best moments of the film. Yeah, absolutely. It was extremely sweet, that whole thing. There's a lot of times I've found in Indian cinema where the lead goes to jail, especially in older. It's an easy plot point to make an insurmountable moment for your hero. Put them in jail. Wrongly put in jail. That's how I started off Barbarian, it's a really easy way to, I mean it just happens to be historically accurate as well, but a really great point of conflict and a story that can give you a lot when you're creating something is put your hero in a situation that they themselves are powerless to get out of and you want them to get out of it. And once again they thought he was the thief that something went missing and he was immediately accused because he's a foreigner. Well, and even his murder of the guy was self-defense. The other guy pulled the knife and he killed him in self-defense, but it really didn't matter. I thought he killed him. Oh, you're right. Yeah, he only got eight years for that. I also thought the I don't know what his title is, but the lead jailer or whatever, the warden maybe. I thought he was really good. Yeah, I thought he was really a good actor and I liked his character as well. And the wife, mom, the minute she was on screen was beautiful and did a very good job. I thought both children. I did too. Well, I got in the beginning his actual daughter as well. We didn't get to see her a lot, but Minnie is the main, was it Minnie? Mimi. Was the main one we got to see. She was extremely adorable. And all those stories, about hitting the in-laws or something like that, is that like a old... Yeah, I don't know what that reference... Did Johnny say anything about that? No, she didn't. They were going to hit their in-laws. Well, the thing about the in-laws, which you would know is the fact that for the girl, when they get married, the girl goes and lives with the son's family. So in the households of India, the daughters are the one who are going to have to go through the big loss. It's one of those things, if you watch an Indian wedding, you see when we've seen this, where the bride, she's bawling. She's so sad, because she's leaving her home. The son doesn't have to leave his home. She's coming to his home. But the whole hitting thing, I don't know, I'm guessing it's just the fact that why would you like to be in that place with your in-laws? You'd rather be home with your real family. You're tearing her off at 14 in the end. Yeah. Standard fare. Different times. Different times. Standard fare and different times. So many things in this film that are like, oh man, we are obviously, how many years? Almost 80, 70 years later. Something like that difference between then and now in a different culture. I actually liked that it looked and felt so much older than 1957. I love the fact. There are so many flaws that I loved. Like the fake beard. It's endearing things of old films. Very endearing. That climactic fight with the stabbing and they drop the bottle so the liquid's pouring out which obviously is conveying the blood pouring out and the guy's hand is purposefully left on the bottle which doesn't look natural or the choppy edit when he sees Mimi run to him on the playground and it flashes back to his little girl running to him whenever he got home. The editing on that is so bad. But it's the best they had at the day. Absolutely. Fuck, I was going to say something. Oh, no. I don't know why. I checked at two different places and it was the exact same. Sometimes stuff wasn't subbed. Oh, did you notice that? I did. Most of the time Andrani pointed out that they were repeating what they just said so there was nothing new that you needed to hear. Sometimes they wasn't. There were a couple of times where two or three times where that happened and Andrani threw her hand up like... What are you doing? Why aren't you translating that? Yeah, it was like a whole emotional thing, like a scene that happened and like for 20 seconds there were no subs. She threw her hand up and said, what are they doing? I stopped at a moment and I went to a different site that had less quality of the video to see if they had subbed it and it was the exact same thing. Most of the time it was repetition and she said they're just saying what they just said that's why you're not seeing the subs. But there were a couple of times where she was and she told me what they said because she speaks Bengali and it... I don't know why it's that way. Yeah, it's very strange. At least there's subs. Yeah, and I thought the mother and the father did well in their roles. I thought everybody did a good job. It was a very simple but I thought beautiful film. Me too. And it was easy to root for the main guy and why he was sad and why he wanted to spend time with us even though obviously it's a different time now but you understood immediately. He just misses his daughter. Exactly, this girl reminds him of his daughter. That's it. For him it's his second daughter as he said and it could have easily been messed up if the essence of the lead playing the lead doesn't come across as anything other than just platonic sweetness. Yes. If he in any way gave some kind of cringiness to it like. Give me an example. After the roles that he's done so if you had put a Robin Williams in this role you completely believed the innocence of what he's doing or a Tom Hanks. If you put Joaquin Phoenix in this role there's a sense of he would probably get you to he would earn his trust but at first there wouldn't be the immediate sense of trust because Joaquin Phoenix's roles are always he always has a lot of edgy different kinds of characters and there's not this innate sense of trust in him. He would absolutely pull it off but there wouldn't be the immediate and the continual sense that this character just in his eyes Joaquin Phoenix Christopher Joaquin that would just be weird. Hey. I just want to see your daughter. I miss my daughter. Can I spend time with your daughter? I have a note. Dried fruit. Dried fruit. Yeah that'd be weird. That'd be a little weird. Anyways I thought it was a Lasramiller. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I thought it was a lovely film. I'm very glad we were able to get to a Bengali classic and even though we're going to get to every Satya Rai film at some point Of course. I still want to watch all his stuff. I just wanted to get to stuff that also wasn't him because we've probably seen Hindi obviously was probably the one that we had the most or second most but Bengali we might have the most classics of just because of how much of Rai's work we've already watched. I would say 90% 80% of what we've watched in the Bengali industry has been Rai. Anyway so let us know what the next classic whether it's Satya Rai or non Satya Rai films that we should watch and any other Bengali films that we should watch and what you thought about the film down below.