Film review: Best of the rest

Taqwacores, The Pink Saris, 127 hours and Mars - worth a watch?

127 Hours

“An action movie with a guy who can’t move”? Sounds curious. But 127 Hours is far more than this humble description by its Academy Award winning director, Danny Boyle.

James Franco (Milk, 2008) stars in this true story about American mountain climber Aron Ralston and the 127 hours he endured trapped under a boulder, in a ravine in Blue John Canyon, Utah. A modern reminder of John Donne’s cautionary poem No Man is an Island, Ralston who leads a selfish thrill-seeking life in which he takes his relationships for granted, doesn’t tell anyone that he is going to Blue John and is ultimately faced with the harsh reality that no one is going to save him. The film is “not a survival film” according to Boyle; it is about Ralston’s rediscovery of his own humanity.

The film is a paradox; depicting the static physical and mental ‘journey’ Ralston embarks on in this life-defining ordeal. Boyle creates a world in which the frenetic desperation of the situation is brilliantly captured alongside the solemn contemplations of a man faced with his impending death. With the help of cinematographers Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak, the simple brutality of the vast landscape is perfectly juxtaposed with the fragility of one man’s life.

Transforming an immobile 127 hours into a gripping tale is an impressive feat and one accomplished to the high standards we have grown to expect from Danny Boyle. Combined with a beguiling score created by AR Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire, 2009) that embodies this incredible tale, 127 Hours is a must watch.

Mars



Sci-fi slacker animation film Mars, created by former Maths and Physics boffin, Geoff Marslett, is the sort of film that really annoys me. Stunningly made (the film’s unique look is described by Marslett as “half way between a graphic novel and a hand-coloured photograph”) and overlaid with a fresh and quirky script, it is yet to have a distribution deal in the UK.

Starring cult figures Kinky Friedman as President of the USA and musician Howe Gelb, the film tells of three astronauts and their journey to Mars. Some critics have condemned the film for a lack of antagonistic forces within it, but it wouldn’t have its charming slacker feel if it wasn’t this way. A visual delight, Mars is a cult classic in the making and Marslett, a director to watch.

The Pink Saris



The ‘Pink Saris’ or ‘Gulabi Gang’ are a group of women from India’s Untouchables caste, living in Uttash Pradesh. The gang, led by Sampat Pal Devi, herself a middle aged untouchable, all dress in pink as a symbol of solidarity against the abuses they and other untouchable women have suffered in the community. Directed by award winning British documentary filmmaker Kim Longinetto, Pink Saris looks at different cases of abused women taken on by Sampat Pal. Well-known for her documentaries on women who take their rights into their own hands, Longinetto’s films are usually empowering and uplifting. However, as the film progresses, focusing on an uneasy choice for a heroine in Sampat Pal, Pink Saris takes on a surprisingly eerie tone.

Sampat Pal’s task is by no means an easy one, but when she returns a runaway daughter-in-law to her husband’s abusive family, to settle scores with her own ex-husband’s family, we begin to question how much she truly believes in her own doctrine and how much of her women’s liberation rhetoric is bluster and self-promotion.

By the end of the film, we question whether the pink colour worn in solidarity by these women is in fact a symbolism of their freedom or a constant reminder of their ostracism. Instead of being given a staple portion of documentary black and white hope for these women’s rights fighters, we are left with the grey reality of the huge task these women face against a close-minded society and, at times, against their own social conditioning.

A fascinating and well-directed cinematic insight into the lives of the real people this self-professed ‘largest democracy in the world’ tries to keep hidden.

The Taqwacores

Based on the debut novel by Michael Muhammad Knight, published in 2004, of the same name, The Taqwacores is an indie film about the Islamic punk movement. Set in Buffalo, New York, Knight’s book told of a fictitious underground Muslim punk movement. So many have been inspired by the book, that this imagined movement has now become a reality and has spawned bands such as The Kominas and Al-Thawra, both in the film’s soundtrack.

A portmanteau of the words ‘taqwa’ meaning love and fear of Allah and ‘hardcore’, the punk rock subgenre, the Taqwacores is a provocative but humourous drama about a young Muslim student, Yusef (Bobby Naderi) who decides to move out of college dorms and into a house full of like-minded Muslims. What he ends up with are a group of young Muslim contradictions, including a burqa-wearing ‘riot grrl’, who make him question who he is and who he wants to be.

What the film lacks in a well-developed storyline, it makes up for in swagger and resolve. The Taqwacores maintains a clear and heartfelt message as it portrays the struggle felt by many young Muslims in reconciling their Muslim identities with living in the West.



Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2010.