(FEATURE FILM)
DIRECTED BY RUVENDRA G. RAVI
COUNTRY MALAYSIA
REVIEWED BY PEYMAN SHAMOHAMADI (Honourable Jury, Tehran)
WUIFF AUGUST SESSION 2021
“Storytelling” is always for the people of the Orient. Story always comes first. Engages the emotions of the audience. Audiences in the post-Corona world need human storytelling and data more than anything else. Moments from “This Too Shall Pass” did just that. An honorable and unassuming story that emphasizes family ties and self-sacrifice and love between members of a family as well as human beings. This movie does not want to pretend or be complicated. Everything in this movie seems “simple”. But the main problem of this film is “creating a feeling of pity” in its audience. The film deals too much with the “external” emotions of humans and characters, and this is quite evident in the dialogues and sequences and the main line of the story. This makes the film transform from depth to surface. Also, emotions that are similar to “advice” are transmitted to the audience: It is as if everything is narrated in a “pitiful” way. Some of the sequences and dialogues could be omitted (especially the middle of the film, for example, scenes where a young couple tried to create a mobile fast food establishment). This long sequence removed the core of the story and the suspense from the film. In my opinion, the time of the film is long and everything could be narrated in twenty minutes.
The film is weak in terms of technique and technical principles:
Inadequate graphic cuts and transitions, Better sound design expect, “flat” and television decoupage, lack of proper lighting, useless staging, superficial acting and lack of characterization of actors, and a script that has only an attractive theme and lacks a deep structure in the content. Most of the film’s message is conveyed to its audience through direct, instructive dialogues. In essence, cinema means “behaviour.” We should perceive the story through the indirect behaviour of the characters and not convey everything to the audience in exaggerated sentences.
But finally, congratulations to the owner of this film who was able to achieve a human theme through the “corona” epidemic and send a meaningful message to us. This film is honorable and respectable from this point of view!
Peyman Shahmohamadi
(Honorable Jury, Tehran)