Delighted I am, dear Film Threat reader, to report that though writer-director Elham Ehsas’s There Will Come Soft Rains deals with exhuming a corpse, it was by far and away an all-around more pleasurable experience than the last short I watched, featuring a similar topic.
Indeed, Ehsas and co-writer Sam Perry’s quirkily exquisite, candlelight-drenched dramedy of a woman coming to grips with the state of the world’s climate, whilst deep in the throes of her own seemingly unrelenting existential crisis, is like a lovingly hand-crafted miniature of a Mike Leigh film. Though there are some among those who think of climate change as a little like believing in Santa Claus. We won’t truly see the effects till our back doors are floating. This eventuality, along with Hamlet-enjoy pestering of her father’s (Arjun Singh Panam) ghost, leads our mentally tormented leading lady, Mira (Olivia D’Lima), into a severe illogical spiral in which she believes her dad’s grave shall soon suffer a flooded fate. Therefore, she is on a quest to dig the old man up, bringing his burial site to high ground, else it’ll, in time, sink beneath the water table.
“Mira persists in her private crusade until the cops slap the cuffs on her…”
Refusing help and rejecting all reason and accountability, Mira persists in her private crusade until the cops slap the cuffs on her, following her going to town on the problem of her father’s exhumation with a shovel and the strength of her own back. But the sympathetic police officers allow the distraught Mira off with a warning. Go through the right channels, or face arrest for your lack of intelligence in proceeding in an orderly fashion, and possibly seek mental help. Frazzled and frantic, Mira seeks the only person sensible to her plight. Her sister, Fatima (Priya Davdra), who, just like the authorities, questions her wayward sister’s sanity upon their impromptu family reunion. They set the table for a meeting of hearts and minds. Still, old hurts and wounds must face the knife before it forces a sister to make a choice. To go with her gut, or stick with family.
Depending on your perspective, There Will Come Soft Rains could be about climate change as much as it could be a distillation of the complex dynamics within a dysfunctional family, and a strict, unquestioning adherence to tradition. Yet, as I mentioned at this review’s beginning, this picture delighted me, so I can happily inform you it is neither one nor the other. It’s a smooth and extremely satisfying blend of the two.
"…smooth and extremely satisfying..."
