[yasr_overall_rating]
Devastated by his daughter’s suicide, an immigrant entrepreneur working in high-tech seeks answers to his lingering questions.
Based in Silicon Valley, California, “The Valley” is definitely a coming-of-age film. The story is, overall, both warm and heartbreaking. Neal Kumar (Alyy Khan) portrays an entrepreneur, who has a wonderful wife Roopa (Suchitra Pillai). They also have two daughters, Monica (Salma Khan) and Maya (Agneeta Thacker). This movie does a great job of accurately depicting the pressure of society’s standards and how important it is to nurture your mental health.
Neal believes he has a normal life until his daughter Maya commits suicide. Finding out that the person in the urn is his daughter, completely breaks your heart into pieces. He is so depressed that he even contemplates it himself. This throws us into flashbacks from the year prior. We then see Maya and how she is portrayed in the “perfect society” that is Silicon Valley. Her parents continuously throw parties and she just sits outside. These guests talk about her as if she’s the misfit of the family. She begged her sister Monica to stay with her for one more week but wouldn’t tell her what was wrong. She was extremely quiet as well. Her family spends most of the movie wondering why they didn’t see the signs.
Throughout this film, each of the characters go through multiple stages of grief. Neal is feeling anger and blames his daughter for dying even though he gave her everything she could have possibly wanted. This is, unfortunately, a lot of parents’ mindset after their child commits suicide. He doesn’t know much about Maya’s life and regrets not asking her more questions. He doesn’t even know who her friends were in college. Roopa feels the same because she continually asks Monica if she was a good mom. She also is in a state of denial and is trying to push chores and sports in front of her feelings about the death. The housekeeper is the one that mostly knows about her life. When Neal visits her roommate Laura and her friend Alicia, he is forced to realize how sad Maya really was. It turns out she was in love with a boy named Chris.
Each character’s life was altered when she took her own life. Neal was forced to ask lingering questions and he found out some things he didn’t want to know from her journal. Roopa was forced to look at her mother-daughter relationship with Maya, and Monica was forced to see that Maya was crying for help when she asked her to stay.
This movie shows exactly how important it is to recognize the signs of depression and suicidal thoughts. Not just with Maya but also with Neal who tries to hide it as well. This indie film is definitely worth watching.
In limited theatrical release June 8th and on VOD, Blu-ray & DVD June 16th
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