If you're looking for a film that will make you comfortable about the world around you, Shakti is not that film. 

It's not that Shakti is overly dramatized. 

It's not that Shakti writer/director plays for the drama. 

Shakti is, in fact, a surprisingly calm and beautiful film. 

It's that Walker seemingly knows that when your film is grounded in truth, drama is unnecessary. You don't need to heighten the drama or shock the audience or fill the screen with traumatizing images. 

The truth is powerful enough.

In Shakti, that truth centers around a single mother, Durga (Laxmi Bardewa), and her young daughter, Lila (newcomer Polina Oli). That truth is set in Kathmandu, a seemingly calm opening scene giving way to truths so deeply ingrained in the Nepali culture that no extraneous narrative threads are necessary and there are no histrionic scenes to be found in this remarkable film. 

In fact, so powerful are the truths that unfold here that silence speaks more than words every could. We learn early on why Durga is single. We also learn early on how that basic truth in many ways defines her for the rest of her life. 

It is just the way it is. 

Walker makes it clear in Shakti that "just the way it is" isn't good enough, though she's also wise enough to not let Shakti fall into Hallmark greeting card sentimentalized answers. Shakti is a beautiful film grounded within the centuries old traditions and beauty of a nation oft-romanticized and seldom understood. It's a nation simultaneously recognized for its traditions and spirituality along with its inequality, uncertainties, and institutionalized chaos. 

We don't necessarily fall in love with Durga. We "feel" her. We feel the disrespect she experiences every single day of her life as she works long hours cleaning in a hospital where she fills a "caste quota" and is otherwise emotionally shunned. She cares for the hospital, though the hospital never cares for her. The words here are sparse. We see the impact, we feel the impact, in her subtle physicality. We feel a tension that is never really spoken. It simply exists. She is welcome to work, but she is never truly wanted in this place. 

Lila, on the other hand, hasn't yet learned these truths. Lila, sublimely portrayed by Polina Oli, carries a lightness to her being that feels like how we want Nepal to truly be. There's an innocence that is so palpable that we long for it to remain. 

Picked up by Buffalo 8 following a successful festival run, Shakti is a profound film that doesn't necessarily feel profound. Shakti invites us into these lives and introduces us to these people before slowly peeling away their truths. 

The story in Shakti is relatively straightforward and deceptively simple. We've seen variations of this story before, though seldom, if ever, in the way that Walker tells the story. Yet, there is more here than simply the story. Nani Sahra Walker isn't simply telling a story. She's telling cultural truths and universal truths and speaking words left unspoken for generations. She's bringing forth dignity for those who've never been afforded it. 

It would be easy to pity the lives of Durga, Lila, and Durga's sister, Maya (Menuka Pradhan), lower caste members who struggle financially and take up very little space. Yet, Walker demands we not pity them. There is nothing put forth on the screen to pity, though we're also pulled away from romanticizing them. Instead, we feel their lives and deeply respect them. 

It's difficult to communicate just how good Polina Oli is here as Lila, a vibrant and sweet and expressive young girl whose behavior changes when her promising talent for art is mentored by an older teacher. 

We know why. You know why. Walker doesn't drown us in the why, but she focuses her lense on Lila and on the mother who believes in a culture that not only doesn't but but also doesn't seem to care. 

Born in Kathmandu, Walker's insights here are so clear and precise that they barely need to be spoken. She understands this legal system where sexual abuse must be reported in thirty-five days. She understands quietly lived yet never forgotten caste systems and expectations and limitations. She understands the seeming inevitability of institutionalized abuse. 

And so it comes to life here. 

Laxmi Bardewa is extraordinary as Durga, a mother whose listening is grounded upon her own lived expeirences. There's a sense of breaking the cycle here, though never an overly sentimentalized sense that the cycle is broken. 

As Maya, Menuka Pradhan is also profoundly moving but also in quieter ways. She's slow and steady and present in a culture that seldom rewards these things. 

Lensing by Keiko Nakahara is simultaneously warm and uncomfortable intimate, at times even quietly confrontational. Nakahara's lens lulls us into comfort with the beauty of Nepal before demanding that we take notice of the rest of the story. William Ryan Fritch has an original score here, though it's sparse and underplayed in a refreshingly story-driven approach. Again, this is where the truth is enough. Walker refuses to play allow for distraction. Shakti is about these characters and this world in which they live. 

Nothing else matters. 

Shakti isn't a comfortable film. It's not an easy film to watch. Of course, cinema is meant for more than entertainment. Indeed, I believe that cinema can and often does change the world in which we live. Shakti doesn't make empty promises nor does it reward our faithfulness with Nani Sahra Walker's extraordinary storytelling. Instead, it presents to us the lives of Durga, Lila, and Maya and reminds us that they matter. 

Nothing else matters. 

Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic