The look and feel of this film is of a "real" story, based at least somewhat on facts, although it seems rather too preposterous to be real. We are presented with a semi-literate, backwater Hindu cracker, in love with "books" the way people of limited literacy tend to be, desiring nothing so much as to write some himself, but with barely enough talent to produce more than grandiose pamphlets. Similarly, with no actual training or experience to draw from, he imagines himself to be a gifted masseur. Evidently in the more rustic districts of Trinidad, where superstitions run high, people were greatly impressed by such pretensions, and he does rather well for himself. Soon he is holding "court" on his potato patch, with lines of rural boobs waiting their turn to be blessed or have their marital quarrels adjudicated. The film has a Hindu flavor of the American Evangelical movement of the 1920s, somewhat squalid and shabby intellectually. It is presented in retrospect form the point of view of a young fellow who experienced a "spiritual healing" from the pundit in his childhood. The lettered rube is therefore treated with the greatest respect, as though nearly a Gandhi or Nehru! It is exceedingly well done technically and artistically, if only the story was less peculiar and doltish.
