The tagline for this beautiful documentary is “It’s a love story like no other. It’s an inspiring, heartwarming epic true-life adventure about believing in love against all odds and risking everything for what your heart tells you.” And that’s true. Because basically, this is the story of PK, a young man who, in 1977, was 23 years old. He lived in Delhi, India, and was a street artist. He was from a poor, ”untouchable” family. This young man fell in love with a woman, Lotta, whom an astrologer had mentioned when he was a child. However, she lived in Sweden, and he met her after a 22-day car trip along the Silk Road to India, which was popular with hippies in the 70s. PK didn’t have the money to take a car, so he did the next best thing: he did it on a bicycle. This film is his story of that trip to the woman he felt was his soul mate.
Everybody in The Cycle of Love, other than the people who re-enact these two young lovers, are the actual real people from the story. And that’s what lends some of the film its magic. PK made his living sketching portraits of people in pencil: 10 minutes, 10 Rupees. In those 10 minutes, he had the gift of gab, and he could get people to open up so that the pictures he drew were actually true portraits of the people posing for him. Not just a cartoon caricature. So all these beautiful people he meets by doing sketches, as he’s traveling on his way to the woman he loves, are all real people. And their stories are real too.
Even if this film told only the story of these two starry-eyed people who fell in love, it would still be worth seeing. However, there’s another layer to this film that I find even more interesting. On this very long arduous quest that PK took ; he had to wrestle with his own inner demons about being born into the Dalit caste in India.
For over 3,000 years, people born in this caste, which was below the lowest caste that there was, were outcasts. Calling them broken or untouchable, you could do anything to them. You could kill them; you could steal from them and get away with it. If their Shadow even crossed your path and touched you, you were thought of as unclean. They were considered less than even animals. It wasn’t until 1950 that the government finally outlawed this kind of discrimination. So PK was raised with this kind of hatred towards him, but he wanted more. He wanted to believe he was better than his circumstances and humble birth. So this film ends up not only being a study of true love between a man and a woman, but also the love you have to have for yourself before real change can happen.
I give The Cycle of Love 4 stars. It’s a lovely contemplation of what it means to get out of your own way and heal from your past so you can experience the love everyone deserves.
Directed by: Orlando von Einsiedel
Rated: NR
Running Time: 1 hr 38 min
Documentary
Release: Limited theaters Aug 28th wider release Sept 4th
Starring: Mina Dale, Chirag Lobo, PK Mahanandia