Load of rubbish!!

Let's be realistic.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I fully and completely refuse to Be subjected to services provided by Indian people. the bad thing is American people Have become lazy so they subcontract these companies from overseas to answer telephones when they should be paying Americans who need jobs to answer phones.I make a phone call The Indian operator answers. And I would hang up on his a**. I don't have to be subjected to a person who is supposed to know how to speak English answering a telephone for company that is supposed to have American English speaking answering services and get the Indian version can't even make a decent Sentence, much less be able to understand anything that I have to say about anything that I need to contact the company about.My suggestion is start boycotting anything that has to do with any company that wants to use an Indian operator because I absolutely refuse to speak to most companies and I will boycott till the end of my days.

The explosion of call centers in India is an intriguing topic for a documentary, & I had heard a lot about this movie. Unfortunately, it just didn't work for me. The characters were just not that engaging, & in no case it went really deep into the call center life. In one case, a woman spends a lot of time explaining she is a natural blond. Now that's typical in an Indian call center! I would have liked to know more about where these people come from. What's their education. Their family. I also think it was centered on one city, and on sales only, whereas call centers also have tech support, customer service, market research & a whole lot of other activities. There were these shots of Mumbai that seemed to scream "look at me, I'm so artsy!" Further, overall the drudgery of call centers didn't really some through. Also, I would have liked to see the management side, how they react to the callers. I would have liked to see someone who got burnt-out (which is very common in call centers). There were some sequences that were very competent, but overall it felt it just didn't form a satisfying story, which is what a documentary should be.

We wanted to see this in Toronto in Sept. 2005, but it was sold out. So we saw it at the DC Filmfest April 23, 2006. Some people will see it as rather boring and uninvolving. However, I thought it was impressive on several levels. As you go through the six sketches about the call center workers, it takes a while to realize that once you've left a character, that's it, you're not going back to see what happened to them. Enough is shown about each character to show you the essence of what makes them tick, but not enough to get you too emotionally involved. No matter what attitude you bring into the movie (mine was "the call centers are probably exploiting these people and overworking them"), your attitude will change during the movie. Certainly the first character, Glen, summed up what my feelings would probably be--trapped, hates the job, but see no way to escape. But that's Glen. As you go on, you see that the others really love their jobs and their lives, and that their lives have been transformed at a much deeper level by the job and the environment. I think for the real meaning of the movie you have to go back to the opening narration--it's a virtual life, with real people trapped in it. Some of them begin to see this virtual life as reality. Whether that's good or bad, I'm not sure--is it better to see the world completely realistically? Wouldn't you just commit suicide?--but to some extent we are all in the same boat, and that's what makes this movie much more than a documentary about a call center in Bombay.

This excellent new film from India is showing for the first time in Europe at the Berlin Film Festival. After great reviews at Toronto, I expected a very stupid film like Super Size Me... no, this turned out quite surreal - what a scary, weird and odd world this film shows us. And it is all real - our strange 21st world! The film was voted one of the best undistributed films of the year in the US by both The Village Voice and Indiewire, who have their pulse on new independent cinema."In vast, fluorescent rooms, thousands of ambitious young Indians talk to people in Kentucky, California or Idaho. Bridging continents by telephone, they pitch products and soothe frayed consumer nerves. As they troubleshoot, they dream of America. As they dream, they change. What is it like to transport yourself to a remote land you've never even seen? How does it feel to live so far outside your own body? Welcome to the world of offshore call centers. John & Jane is an astonishing look at the souls of the outsourced. Shot on 35mm and composed with unsettling grace, this documentary finds an entirely original and fitting language to express the eerie dislocation of virtual work. The lives it depicts are real, but the film's approach gives those lives the scope of speculative fiction."The music is really beautiful, too - very ambient and chilling - with electronic musicians from all over contributing to the score, including Germany's Thomas Brinkmann and Japan's Minamo.For anyone who likes films that don't leave you easily - this is a must see!