777 Charlie

Dharma works at a factory and does nothing else. He comes home, heats food, sleeps. He does not talk to his neighbours and nobody calls on him. One morning he finds a dog at his door. Charlie has lived on the street, is frightened, and will not go. Dharma tries to drive her off. Then she stays. The house changes; there are walks, there is something to talk about, people are met. Then the vet says something. Charlie is ill. Dharma gets in the car and decides to drive to the other end of the country. Kiranraj K. writes and directs; it is his first feature. Rakshit Shetty plays Dharma; Raj B Shetty, Bobby Simha and Sangeetha Sringeri are in the cast. The language is Kannada. The production took years; working with the dog lengthened it and the animal playing Charlie went through a long period of training. The film did well at the Kannada box office and spread through dubbing into other languages. The matter it treats is loneliness turned into habit; the dog is not a remedy but a disruption. The narrative uses the road film shape and the second half reaches into northern India. The film takes the state of street animals as a subject too and the shelter scenes are hard. The narrative does not hide its emotional steering and does it openly at the end. The music is by Nobin Paul and the score carries the feeling. Its limit is length; the narrative runs close to three hours and the middle sags. Who it is for: viewers who like films about animals and emotional road narratives. Who it is not for: it is long, the emotional dose very high, and the ending bitter.