The caretaker

Is Pakistani politics a horror story or a drama? Or a tragedy waiting to become a tragicomedy? ‘What happens when the thing you fear the most is all that can save you?’ Fear the prospect, this season, of caretakers! Don’t rush to a clairvoyant. Just watch the Aussie movie by writer-director Tom Conyers, The Caretaker, which was released last year. Here is the official synopsis: “As a wave of vampirism sweeps the world, a small but discordant group hole up in a country mansion in Victoria, Australia. A vampire, who has also occupied the mansion, offers them a deal: if they protect him from humans during the day, he’ll protect them from other vampires at night. So, begins an uneasy alliance, which soon threatens to fall apart.” Sounds familiar?

Even those who have no taste for vampire movies would like it. I did, getting sick and tired of writing about the caretakers. With Hafeez Shaikh jumping into the arena, the plot is already thickening. But let’s get back to the movie, where people have to suffer an IMF-like dose of austerity. Vampire movies are known to be bloody. This one spills just enough blood for us to know that there is a grave, existential danger. There is romance so that one does not forget that humans are humans. There is drama, as well as suspense, perhaps, to remind us that it is only a movie. Horror is in the eyes of the beholder. The deal-offering vampire is a doctor. It is a shaky deal as vampires have no love lost for one another. Interestingly, the group holed up together is held together as if in a marriage. One member of the group keeps preaching that marriages must never break up. Even some statistics are thrown around to prove the point. For instance, the suicide rate is six times higher in separated men, using an economist-like refrain of ‘what does that tell you?’ Ironically, a couple whose relationship is in tatters is also in the group, strategising to overcome the danger. An old man is more concerned with protecting his ailing mother. The vampire doctor had come to see his mother before he became a nightwatchman. He is intelligent and serious in delivering care and cure. The good doctor though, is part of the problem, not the cure for the people huddled together, despite their diverse backgrounds and changing preferences. What unites them is the fear of the monster outside, however, the presence of a monster inside makes the confusion even more confounded. In a sense, ‘Ranjha Ranjha kar di, mein apei Ranjha hoi’.



The way the dynamics play out is fascinating. How a simple concern develops into an epidemic affecting the entire society is masterfully captured. Human interaction is understood best in an atmosphere of fear and the struggle to survive. At places, where the pace is annoyingly slow, the viewer is embedded into the cast and begins to feel that something like a suicide bomber is about to launch himself. In the resulting helter-skelter, the will to survive together is blown into pieces. The agreement with the doctor-turned-vampire looks like talking to the Taliban. The fear spreads that the doctor is sharing his nest with other vampires. The discussion to kill him is postponed to gain another night of protection. In the end, all hell breaks loose, confirming what the doctor had suspected in the very beginning: we may end up fighting for territory.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22^nd, 2013.