The Cane Cutter: a poignant love story entwined with history

Movie review: The Cane Cutter

Cast: Razeen Dada and Dr Kajal Lutchminarain 

Director: Eubulus Timothy 

Rating: 7/10 

RELEASED to coincide with the 165th anniversary of the first indentured labourers from India to arrive in Natal in November, The Cane Cutter uses a unique style of filmmaking, blending documentary realities from the past to a modern-day love story within the local Indian community.

Eschewing the trend often used by local Indian filmmakers - of using accents and idiosyncrasies of the community that have largely faded away - director Eubulus Timothy sets out to develop a long-held vision of producer Shan Moodley to tell the story of indenture and its trials and tribulations in a way largely forgotten by the descendants of those first migrants three generations later.

In the process, the own personal challenges of a young couple, Dev (Razeen Dada) and Amisha (Dr Kajal Lutchminarain), are merged into the tales of their forebears in a realistic way.

Dev gives up his law studies to make a movie, much to his father’s disappointment, while Amisha, a divorced mother of a young girl, struggles with the baggage of her mother’s own disappointments. As they end up working together on the film-within-the-film, the couple discover a connection – the love between their own great-grandparents who were on the same ship, but got separated after landing.

Short documentary clips with renowned South African Indian leaders, including Ela Gandhi, professor Salim Abdool Karim and Ashwin Desai as well as Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, are interwoven into the script of the love story to render the film more palatable than an ordinary documentary alone would.

The Cane Cutter needs to be watched with children in the latest generation to give them a sense of what their roots are.

Fakir Hassen is a veteran Bollywood critic who has written three books on the subject.

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