Khuda Ke Liye

I recently watched Khuda ke liye (For the sake of God), Pakistan's critically (and internationally) acclaimed movie depicting some of the country's deeply entrenched and divisive social issues: religious conservatism vs liberalism, east vs west, men vs women.

Shoaib Mansoor's film almost succeeded in convincing me of its merits but sadly a few things detracted too substantially from the viewing experience.

1. It reinforces plenty of stereotypes (which may reflect the state of affairs in Pakistan) but I find it hard to accept that there is such a barren middle ground between the wildly polarised ends of manifestation and expression of religious belief. Fanatical religious zealots and unfettered libertines seem to make up the majority of the cast of characters with the odd individual in a state of transition from one state to the other or in denial.
2. Mary (a second generation Pakistani in the UK who is forced into a marriage in Afghanistan) has the worst Mockney accent in cinematic history. It makes Don Cheadle's accent in Ocean's Eleven, 'the most preposterous Cockney accent since Dick van Dyke' seem like a linguistic masterclass. [Incidentally, Mary's father who dupes her into this awful relationship, leaves the village he has chosen as her prison before wishing her goodbye because the toilet's aren't quite up to scratch!]
3. It was far, far too long. The point could have been made in at least 60 minutes less time.
4. The accompanying subtitles were obviously compiled by someone with a working knowledge of neither Urdu nor English. Simply hopeless.

Still, despite these shortcomings, the film bodes well as a harbinger of what's to come from non-Lollywood Pakistani cinema.

The Top 21 International Films. Discuss.

A list put together by a friend of a friend. Pan's Labyrinth and Cache are very worthy inclusions.

1. Fateless (Hungary/Poland)
   
2. The Clay Bird (Bangladesh)
   
3. Paradise Now (Occupied Palestinian Territories)
   
4. Tsotsi (South Africa)
   
5. Osama (Afghanistan)
   
6. City of god (Brazil)
   
7. Spirited Away (Japan)
   
8. Children of heaven (Iran)
   
9. Moolade (Senegal)
   
10. Pan’s Labyrinth (Mexico)
    
11. Etre Et Avoir (France)
    
12. The Edukators (Germany)
    
13. Life Is Beautiful (Italy)
    
14. Almost Brothers (Brazil)
    
15. The Colour Of Paradise (Iran)
    
16. Whale rider (New Zealand)
    
17. Cache (France)
    
18. Au revoir, les enfants (France)
    
19. Central Station (Brazil)
    
20. The motorcycle diaries (Argentina)
    
21. Abandoned (Hungary)

The Last King of Scotland

Giles Foden's excellent novel 'The Last King of Scotland' depicting the relationship between Idi Amin Dada, the eccentric and brutal Ugandan dictator, and his fictional personal physician, has been translated to the silver screen. It is previewing at this year's London Film Festival (incidentally celebrating its 50th anniversary).

See the trailer here.

All importantly, Peter Bradshaw gives it his thumbs up.

Foden reflects on his inspiration for the novel in a piece for the Guardian in 2003.

Some Idi Amin gems:

To Nixon after cuts in US aid to Uganda

My dear brother, it is quite true that you have enough problems on your plate, and it is surprising you have the zeal to add fresh ones. At this moment you are uncomfortably sandwiched in that uncomfortable affair [Watergate], I ask almighty God to solve your problems. We Ugandans hope that the great United States of America does not continue to use its enormous resources, especially its military might, to destroy human life on earth.

To Lord Snowdon after his split with Princess Margaret

Your experience will be a lesson to all of us men to be careful not to marry ladies in high positions.

On Middle Eastern affairs

Arab victory in the war with Israel is inevitable and prime minister of Israel Mrs Golda Meir's only recourse is to tuck up her knickers and run away in the direction of New York and Washington.

Zizou - The Master

It's half-time and Zinedine Zidane has confirmed his greatness by exhibiting his flare, class and inimitable finesse.

You may not be aware that he's the subject of a feature length film by Douglas Gordon under United International Pictures auspices. As always, I'll leave Peter Bradshaw to it:

Zinedine Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait is based on a gloriously simple and audacious idea. To train the camera on the great footballer Zidane over the course of a single match: 90 minutes, in real time. On the ball, and mostly off the ball: just Zidane. Gordon occasionally inserts TV coverage clips for context but otherwise the camera remains on Zidane and his face, as gaunt and impassive as an Easter Island statue, massively dignified in the deafening cauldron of noise. He runs; he frowns; he pants; he spits. He is always watchful. Occasionally, he bursts into action.

In voiceover, Zidane broods about what he can remember, and not remember, from his matches. What would it be like to watch, moment by moment, the undramatic moments of our own off-the-ball lives that won't make it into the edited highlights of memory? By the end, Zidane has achieved the charisma and mystery of the hero from some lost Shakespeare play.

Check out the trailer here (and in high-resolution here).

Marmoulak

Over a year ago I expressed a wish to watch the Iranian film Marmoulak (The Lizard). Lack of availablity, the absence of subtitles and sheer laziness on my part did not help matters. However, I finally got round to watching the film recently and it didn't disappoint. Peter Bradshaw had the following to say about it as his usually frugal hand dished out 4 stars:

Not many Iranian films look like this: part caper, part satire. It's a world away from the opaque style of Kiarostami or Makhmalbaf - think Billy Wilder. Reza (Parvis Parastui) is a cat-burglar nicknamed the Lizard for his ability to scale walls, who walks out of jail by stealing a mullah's gown. He's immediately mistaken for the new head of a local mosque, a pretence he brazens out with such spontaneity that he sparks an extraordinary moral revival in his community.

It's a wonderful film that avoids the tangential confrontation with authority adopted by others in favour of some genuinely funny (yet poignant) comedy. In addition to his clerical robes, the Lizard's eponymous protagonist steals a concept from the same man of the cloth: there are as many paths to God as there are people. Sceptical of the notion himself he nonetheless peddles it to great advantage amongst his host community and the idea serves to catalyse their spiritual rejuvenation as well as his own eventual transformation. He is forced into giving ingenious answers to tricky legal questions regarding the technicalities of life in outer space by mesmerised youth. His first attempt at leading the congregational prayers is a visual delight as is his scaling of walls in full clerical garb.

A refreshing and challenging film. Highly recommended.

Film Recommendations

A couple of films I've seen recently which are worth hunting down.

Le Grand Voyage
Dir: Ismael Ferroukhi, France/Morocco 2004, 1 hour 48 mins, with subtitles

Winner of the award for best first film at 2004's Venice Film Festival, this is a road trip with a difference. Reda, a second generation Moroccan living in an anonymous town in the South of France finds himself reluctantly coerced into chauffeuring his elderly father, Majid, to Saudi Arabia so the elderly patriarch can fulfill his obligation of performing the hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca. The 3,000 mile journey claustrophobically staged in a battered old car enables the disparate pair to acquaint themselves with each other while the constantly shifting backdrop provides a striking metaphor for the dynamics of their relationship. 'It's a carefully considered route with Ferroukhi testing the bonds of the relationship with every twist and turn.' The cinematography is stunning, especially the footage from Mecca itself.

Memorable dialogue:

Reda: Why didn't you fly to Mecca? It's a lot simpler.
The Father: When the waters of the ocean rise to the heavens, they lose their bitterness to become pure again...
Reda: What?
The Father: The ocean waters evaporate as they rise to the clouds. And as they evaporate they become fresh. That's why it's better to go on your pilgrimage on foot than on horseback, better on horseback than by car, better by car than by boat, better by boat than by plane.

Cache (Hidden)
Dir: Michael Haneke, France 2005, 1 hour 57 mins, with subtitles

An engaging thriller; a lucid critique of contemporary French society; a measured study of family life; an example of film as allegory; an exposition of guilt. Cache encapsulates all of the above

"Michael Haneke is a director who has developed and fine-tuned his craft over the past two decades to the point that 'Cache' feels like the purest distillation of his film-making style. Haneke closes with a shot which causes the viewer to re-evaluate everything he has just seen, which throws apart all the pieces of the puzzle you thought you had managed to fit together. 'Cache' is a stunningly clinical and intelligent film which commands the utmost attention throughout and will haunt the viewer's thoughts long after it has finished. It is a masterpiece from one of contemporary cinema's most important figures which plays on our deepest anxieties with devastating potency. For these reasons and more, it is essential viewing." (IMDB)

Moustapha Akkad dies

The Syrian born director/producer Moustapha Akkad and his daughter Rima have been confirmed as two of the victims of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's latest attrocity. The 68-year old directed the groundbreaking 1977 film 'The Message' starring Anthony Quinn that portrayed the life of the Prophet of Islam and introduced his history to a Western audience via the Silver screen for the first time.

BBC News Coverage.

La Haine

Mathieu Kassovitz, director of the powerful French film La Haine (Hate) which I vividly recall first seeing, posted a statement about La Republique's fortnight of rioting on his website yesterday. The film itself 'detailed the aftermath of a riot on an impoverished Paris housing project' and graphically captures the explosive racial tensions between the Parisian elite and the immigrant French underclass by focusing on the shared experiences of a young ghetto trio comprising a second generation Arab, West African and Eastern European Jew.



The following is an extract (of an extract!) published in today's Guardian entitled 'It's hard not to cheer the rioters':

As much as I would like to distance myself from politics, it is difficult to remain distant in the face of the depravations of politicians. And when these depravations draw the hate of all youth, I have to restrain myself from encouraging the rioters.

Nicolas Sarkozy, who has appeared in the media like a starlet from American Idol and who for the past years has been showering us with details of his private life and political ambitions, cannot prevent himself from creating an event every time his ratings go down. This time, Sarkozy [who last week described the rioters as "scum"] has gone against everything the French republic stands for: the liberty, the equality and the fraternity of a people.

By acting like a warmonger, he has opened a breach that I hope will engulf him. Hate has kindled hate for centuries and yet Sarkozy still thinks that repression is the only way to prevent rebellion. History has proved to us that a lack of openness and philosophy between different communities engenders hate and confrontation. Sound and fury are the only means for many communities to make themselves heard.

Hotel Rwanda

I'm finally making headway through my DVD catalogue by getting round to seeing Hotel Rwanda, an independent film released last year. It revisits the shocking Rwandan genocide of 1994. Don Cheadle is cast as Paul Rusesabagina, an African Oskar Schindler, who, as the semi-corrupt assistant manager of the Belgian-owned Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali uses every contact and franc at his disposal to secure the lives of over a thousand individuals who found themselves sheltered in the hotel/refugee camp.

The streetscapes are convincing (as are the characters; unlike Ridley Scott's west African actors masquerading as Somalians in Black Hawk Down) and the brutal atmosphere that is ignited by the death of the Rwandan president and perpetuated by the acts of the Interhamwe militia is recreated in humbling detail. A particularly startling scene involves Paul and a colleague driving along a riverside road when they are engulfed by a thick mist. The van begins to sway and rock leading them to believe they have veered off-road. The mist clears to reveal a road littered with human corpses and remains.

The geopolitical aspects of the whole affair are (perhaps understandably) rather simplistically portrayed and the tone at times too accusatory as in the strange exchange between Paul and Colonel Olivier (a fictionalised Roméo Dallaire):

"The West, all the superpowers, they think you're dirt. They think you're dung. You're not even a nigger. You're African."

The conventional ending does somewhat detract from the message by underming the event itself. But the film asks some poignant questions about the UN/Western response to the slaughter of almost a million people. It also makes you try and desperately recall what you were doing at the time.

Kingdom of Hell

Fate conspired to make me see 'Kingdom of Heaven' yesterday. I went to the cinema with the intention of catching 'The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy' so my conscience can breathe with an uneasy guiltlessness.

If you've seen Kingdom of Heaven and enjoyed it you're either a) a pitiful decerebrate Hollywood junky or b) the lady sitting next to me in the cinema who was compelled to cry during the CGI-driven siege of Jerusalem. Very rarely have I ignored Peter Bradshaw's advice and will think long and hard before doing so again. In fact, he must have been in a most generous of moods to confer two stars upon this Old Testament-like plague of a film.

My reservations may arise chiefly from the shocking 'cultural reference' mismanagement but I think these merely served to emphasise the vacuousness of the whole affair. For instance, in one scene as the Crusaders prepare to depart some innominate European shores to head for the Levant, we catch glimpse of some 'Saracens' praying on a beach. But this is no ordinary prayer. They are scattered along the shore, perhaps 20 yards from each other. Peppered like sandcastles at Blackpool along the expanse, bowing and prostrating, out of synch, with the adhan (call to prayer) blaring in the background. Now I'm no religious scholar but it doesn't take one to point out the ludicrity of the situation. As my friend pointedly remarked, 'perhaps there was a special dispensation at the time of war for people to finish praying before the call to prayer had even ended!' The ensuing merriment amongst us was a source of great consternation to the cinemaphile sitting alongside us who promptly turned around and shouted 'If you're going to laugh and talk you might as well leave. It's so frustrating.' You're not wrong there.

Later on as the comically Oriental looking Salahaddin overlooks the burial of his soldiers lost during the attempt to regain Jerusalem, he holds his hands in the air and in a sombre tone begins to recite the Fatiha (opening chapter of the Qur'an). Midway through the recitation though, for reasons best known to Ridley Scott (and probably Salahaddin's bladder), the surah is curtailed (it's only 7 lines long anyway) and the statement of conclusion (sadaqAllahul adheem - Allah the Great has spoken the truth) is rapidly uttered by Salahaddin. Now that's a warrior in a hurry. He incidentally is shown going to war surrounded by the most ridiculous banners and standards I have ever seen. They seem to be without any historical precedent and wouldn't be out of place in an anti-war rally in Trafalgar square.

The hiring of the improbably wooden Orlando Bloom must have placed severe restrictions on the coffers and meant employing a half-baked (but post 9/11 approved) islamic scholar. That's the only reason I can think of for these amazing oversights.

In kneading the script into an unpalatable mish mash of humanistic drivel, Ridley Scott avoids stepping on Christian and Muslim toes but with the awful lack of attention to detail it's as if he came into my house with muddy shoes, asked for a beer and regaled everyone about how he voted for Roger Godsiff.

The Lizard

Tariq Ali, the devout Pakistani atheist, seems to still be reeling from the beatings meted out by his over-zealous religious tutors as a youngster. His article in today's Guardian Review about 'Islamic cinema', plods along the same well trodden, yet fatally flawed, intellectual path - conflating and confusing Islam with Muslims. Yet his observations on Iranian cinema and the likes of Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf and Panahi are astute. In particular he highlights a film I've been trying to get hold of for a while - Marmoulak (The Lizard).

A convict (known as "the Lizard") escapes from a prison hospital disguised as a mullah. He takes the train to a border town where they are expecting a new mullah. The Lizard has watched enough Iranian television to pick up the clerical style, but he becomes an ultra-humanist cleric, encouraging doubt, analysing Tarantino movies, both surprising and delighting his audience.

London Palestine Film Festival

The annual London Palestine Film Festival is organized by the Palestine
Film Foundation, a project of the Palestine Society at London University's
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

The Festival kicks off on the 22nd of April (until the 6th of May) at the Barbican and SOAS itself. Click here for more details.

The Guardian had this to say about the festival:

This festival was created in 1999 to assist the development of Palestinian cinema and create an audience for it. And it certainly seems to be working. Not only are there more films this year, they've also expanded to take over the Barbican. There are documentaries aplenty but the dramas here are mostly drawn from personal, real-life experiences, making them just as relevant - with appearances from many of the film-makers to clear things up. Arna's Children has ex-pupils reminiscing about an important theatre school, acclaimed thriller Private sums up the Palestinian situation in one occupied house. Epic documentary Don't Touch My Holocaust tries to find method in cruel madness, Rana's Wedding redefines speed-dating and 2,000 Terrorists looks at a fear- induced genocide.

Time wasting

Waste your time properly with these short films commisioned by BMW and directed by the likes of Ang Lee and Guy Ritchie.

HRW International Film Festival 2005

Human Rights Watch, the NGO with the somewhat oxymoronic accolade of being the 'largest human rights organization based in the United States', has just held its International Film Festival in London this year. Three more films to add to the list!

...the festival's program has toured throughout America and Canada, giving Western audiences a rare opportunity to see passionately political filmmaking with a truly global dimension.

This year's event, held March 16-25 in venues across London, offered a trio of film on conflicts from the Middle East: Saverio Costanzo's "Private," Randa Chahal-Sabbag's "The Kite" and Margaret Loescher's "Pulled From the Rubble." Each respectively looked at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Lebanese-Israeli conflict and the human cost of the war in Iraq.

Read Ali Jaafar's review in Beirut's Daily Star.

Don't Panic

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy provided one of the leitmotifs of my childhood in the form of the number 42 - the answer to 'Life, the Universe, and Everything'. I was introduced to it by an uncle along with the gentle reiteration of the book's subtitle: Don't Panic. Douglas Adams' outrageous plot, eccentric characters and ridiculous philosophising meant the book lent itself to dramatisation with both television and radio serialisation.

However, (the usually much maligned) conversion to film always provides a completely different challenge with Lord of the Rings being the only successful adaptation of recent times that comes to mind.

The Hitchhiker's Guide may well be another to add to the list of successes though, if the trailer is anything to go by and Stephen Fry's casting as the voice of The Guide is inspired.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Trailer

Wall

I went to see Simone Bitton's Mur (Wall) yesterday. It's a documentary charting the growth of the wall/fence/obstacle/seam-zone (depending on who you are) being erected 'by the Sharon government to divide the Palestine territories from Israel'.

The film's simplicity certainly makes it quite harrowing. Bitton converses with people either side of the wall in their respective tongues (she enjoys a Jewish and Arab heritage) and presents a stark and simultaneously bizarre state of affairs - many of the construction workers are Palestinians from local villages. The wall's futility is portrayed as perhaps only secondary to its cruelty.

Here are a selection of critics' views on the film.

Comedy films leave viewers in good heart, says cardiologist

I suppose it means a lot more coming from a cardiologist but the godfather of hasya yoga (laughter yoga), Dr Madan Kataria, won't mind. The dollars just keep rolling in for this guy and there's no doubting he'll be laughing all the way to the bank. He's even advocating a Global Laughter Revolution (GLAR).

Laughter may after all be the best medicine. Comedy can make the blood vessels expand, step up the blood flow and leave viewers in good heart, a US heart scientist said yesterday.

Conversely a stressful film can cause a potentially unhealthy narrowing of the arteries.

..."Given the results, it is conceivable that laughing may be important to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease," Prof Miller said.

Click here for the full story.

I don't believe it!

'French booksellers are braced for a rush of interest after another book from the author of The Da Vinci Code is translated into French.' BBC News.

Perhaps more disturbingly, 'The Da Vinci Code is being made into a film starring Tom Hanks.'

I hadn't realised it's been banned in Lebanon.