听 
It's so refreshing when a gifted film-maker introduces you to a new, intoxicating world that it's then a pity if his film procures only the tiniest release. Yet that's what's happened to "Jaya Ganga", a film whose backbone is Hindu mythology and whose unique claim is that it was the first feature to be made at the source of the Ganges.
The movie progresses along the river and, in lesser hands than Vijay Singh's, it would have been emptily episodic, just one river-bend after another. Yet Singh, who has taken an event from his own life as a starting point, and then filtered it through his novel, invests the screen with lyricism and meaning as he unfolds the tale of a writer, himself searching for meaning, who travels from Paris (where he visits the tomb of Andr茅 Breton) all the way to the holy city of Benares, where the answer lies. On the way he is joined by a prostitute who brings out the writer's deepest memories of a past lover.
This is above all a reflective piece, and ideas concerning freedom and personal renewal are very much part of the film's fabric. The sensitive, appropriate music by Vanraj Bhatia only reminds us that soundtracks are so often an unintelligent add-on. Furthermore "Jaya Ganga" is Vijay Singh's first film, but you would never know.
Hindi with English subtitles
