The CCC Movie Group is open to all! Watch the movie(s) on your own, then join the group on Zoom at 7:00 pm on “Movie Mondays” to discuss.  Please contact Lynn Horton for the Zoom link, if you have questions, or if you have difficulty accessing the movie!

Monday, 5/13 – “City of Joy” (1992)

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 (actor Om Puri) 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, (Patrick Swayze) a Houston surgeon distraught after the loss of a young patient, has arrived in India 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 slum area 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, Joy Bethel, (Pauline Collins) who opened and runs the City of Joy clinic. Eventually, Max begins to fit in with his fellow slum-dwellers and become more optimistic. There are many around him whose lives are much worse, but they look on each day with a hope that gives new strength to the depressed doctor.