City of Joy (1992) on Netflix
Max Lowe, a Houston surgeon who quit after losing a patient, travels to Calcutta. There he meets Hazari Pal, who brought his family to the city after losing their farm.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.5/106,049 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes53%
Trailer
Plot summary
Hazari Pal farms in the countryside with his wife Kamla and their three children, and when a moneylender takes their land the family moves to Calcutta to begin again. A con man posing as a landlord takes their rent money, leaving them on the streets, and Hazari searches for work. Max Lowe, a Houston surgeon who could not cope with losing patients, comes to the city looking for something else, and soon after he arrives a young woman tricks him and thugs beat him and take his papers. Hazari brings the injured stranger to the City of Joy, the poor neighborhood where his family settles. Joan Bethel runs a small clinic there and asks Max for his medical help. Ghatak, the godfather who owns much of the neighborhood, and his son Ashok demand protection money from its businesses.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about City of Joy (1992)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The slum the film calls Calcutta was actually based on Anand Nagar in Howrah, itself inspired by the real settlement of Pilkhana, where novelist Dominique Lapierre had carried out much of his research.
- Director Roland Joffé deliberately refused to build large studio sets for City of Joy, using real streets, neighborhoods and public spaces instead, and shot numerous sequences on both banks of the Hooghly River amid regular city traffic and daily public activity.
