Viewed at the 17th Annual Los Angeles Indian Film Festival April 13, 2019 by Alex. Deleon 

"Namdev Bhau In Search of Silence" is an ambitious second film by the talented young  Indian filmmaker Dar Gai (Daria Gaikalova) who is of Ukrainian origin but is now a permanent resident of India.

Her first film "Three and a Half" (2018) was a striking debut feature in three long single takes that was seen at many festivals and showed tremendous promise for the future. Her new film, In Search of Silence, perhaps plagued by the well known "sophomore jinx",  is a high concept opus that does not quite fulfill the height of its concept or the earlier promise.  She took a big chance by casting a non professional of 65 with no acting experience as her central character.  In my estimation this was a fatal mistake.  Mr.Namdev was not very convincing, in fact little more than annoying,  playing himself as an aging personal chauffeur who can no longer stand the noise of the city (especially the noise of his motormouth shrewish wife) and takes off on a solo trek in the mountains of the north (Ladakh) in search of a place of perfect silence.  
The idea sounds good; don't we all wish we could escape the noise pollution of  our chaotic cities, but a few things go wrong.  One, he is latched on to by a teenage boy, Aaliq, also wandering in the mountains in search of something -- a Red Castle that will turn out to be more of a red herring than anything else. The boy has an engagingly naughty personality, perhaps a trifle too jovial for one who has just found his parents murdered, and the twosome trek on and on sparring with each other edgily along the way.  The old man would rather get rid of the boy who is disturbing his peace, but the boy needs the old man to fulfill his mystical mission. Without going into details the mission has something to do with the last wishes of his parents who were found dead, the victims of Honor Killings.  

Bringing into focus the shocking  increase of family honor killings in India of late is perhaps the strongest point of the whole picture.     For the record so called "honor killings" are carried out by the families of lovers who have dared to marry or make love across the hideous caste and religious lines of separation that still mar Indian society. The way this is worked out in the film with a kind of secret map telling the boy where the Red Castle of salvation can be found is pure script manipulation that leads to a pointless forced conclusion. 

The mountain scenery is impressive although too many tricky shots and straight down angles are used to emphasize it.  The weakest part of the film is the central character Namdev Bhau who flails about grumpily with little focus, rhyme, or reason.   In the post film Q&A  Producer Dheer Momaya pointed out amusingly that the non actor Namdev invited to London for a Festival screening saw the complete film there for the first time and, only then, fully understood what he was supposed to have been doing in the picture.   That explains a lot!
At the very end the search for silence concludes with Namdev caught up in a clamorous procession of local Tibetans who inhabit the mountains of Ladakh.  Now the message seems to be that there is no escape even there from the merciless noise of the modern world.   In spite of all these flaws Dar Gai's sense of character in the opening sequences particularly, and of mise en scene generally, is essentially strong.   If the high concept aimed at didn't work out too well this time around, we can still look forward to her next work with high expectations. It should be mentioned that media reviews so far have been generally favorable but applause here was more polite than enthusiastic.  Clippety-clap. Different strokes for different folks.