Frozen

This is a touching and sombre journey by Lasya, who lives with her father Karma, who is in financial ruin, and younger brother Chomo in a remote village in the Himalayas. Pristine snow-capped mountains surround their tiny hamlet and barren, harsh land stretches for miles into nowhere. One day the army moves in and settles a hundred yards from their doorstep. The last bit of comfort the family draws from their familiar surroundings changes into a harsh, ceaseless, irreversible conflict. The family is forced to leave the ancestral home and is frozen by fear. The uncertainty of the future and the threat of death hovers over them.
The photography of Frozen is stunningly beautiful, shot at an average height of 12,000 feet above sea level, in eastern Kashmir on the Chinese border, and in extremely harsh conditions; anywhere below zero degrees Celsius accompanied by cold winds. The part of the girl Lasya in particular is impressive, finding some middle ground between intelligent irony and deadly earnest, youthful hope and exuberance. Shivajee Chandrabhushan’s first film is a very impressive début feature. It includes all kinds of opposites, such as light and dark, good and evil, modernity and tradition, youth and old age, and strikes a fine balance. The music by John P. Varkey from Kerala adds a hypnotic touch to the atmosphere of the film and brings warmth to the frozen landscape. (EH)

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