Film Review: The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir (2018) - Avoidance of Rooting Causes of Refugees
Updated: Jul 14
Dir. Ken Scott (1970-) is not an Indian director but he is a Canadian director who tried to make this eclectic IKEA film 《跟著宜家衣櫃去旅行》(The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir) for both Bollywood and Hollywood. And the result is mediocre.
The protagonist Ajatashatru "Aja" Lavash Patel is a fake magician, he is rather a thief in some way.
One day Aja wants to go to Paris after the death of his own mother Siringh to find their estranged father over there.
When Aja gets trapped in IKEA wardrobe, this strange journey of Aja begins like the one in The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924).
There are many script weak points in this film.
The accidental love romance with the US girl Marie Riviere is too depended on a miracle. Does it easy to get a such kind of girl in IKEA in a few lines? It must be fictional reality of commercial film of IKEA!
Get a beautiful middle class US girl who works for international consulting company in Paris? It is a miracle for poor men.
Poor Bollywood character who represents ''wanna be Bourgeoisie'' dream falls in love with the rich Hollywood character is a romantic and miracle structure of this feature length IKEA commercial film.
Individualism in capitalist society is ''wanna be Bourgeoisie'' dream.
Bourgeoisie's individualist dream of miraculous encounters are this film's ideological features.
The most typical propaganda=commercial aspect of this film is avoidance of rooting causes of refugees, especially in Libya.
This film just only depicts how bureaucrats of UK and Spanish are avoiding seriousness of the tidal wave of refugees from Africa and Middle East where their NATO and US allies had bombed for decades for their own sakes.
It does only depict some funny diplomatic and migrational games among NATO nations on refugee issues.
However it completely avoids the rooting causes for this tidal wave of refugees from Libya.
Aja just donates poor Libyan refugees who tell him their individualist dreams until his illegally gained EURs runout. This cannot solve any rooting causes. It just selling ''wanna be Bourgeoisie'' dreams blindly.
This proves the limitation in commercial driven film like this kind of IKEA feature commercial film which exploits the poor. This is far from decent Indian film master pieces which recently made.
For instance, the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011) successfully had turned his poor country into the one where people enjoying the same high living standard with EU in Africa.
However US-backed/ France-led NATO military interventions in the Libyan civil war caused the assassination of Gaddafi in 2011. That was a typical US regime change operation as a whole.
You can see the comparison between Gaddafi era and post Gaddafi era in Libyan lives below.
GDP per capita was USD$29,000(PPP basis) It is currently USD$11,000(PPP), more than a double drop in living standards.
healthcare for Libyans were free, but now it is estimated that 2.5 million Libyans are in need of healthcare subsidies.
Education was free and Illiteracy rate was 20%, but now 600 schools are closed and 270,000 Libyan youngsters have no school to attend.
Sectarian violence were unheard of. Now there were tensions among all major clans And Just recently, a pet monkey attack on a schoolgirl sparks deadly clashes between clans which leave 20 dead.
Household electricity was free and generous subsidies were given for weddings, housing and car purchase. Now Libyans have to pay full price for everything.
It is obvious that implanting ''wanna be Bourgeoisie'' dream is the nature of commercial filmmaking and its limitless is its blindness against rooting causes of social tragedies like tidal wave of refugees from Africa and Middle East where imperialist countries like NATO invaded and colonised. A true artistic cinema should depict the political truth behind these international tragedies.
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This film article is for educational purpose only.
