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Weekly Worker 543 Thursday September 9 2004
Film
Culture clashes in Edinburgh
The Edinburgh International Film Festival, like this year’s fringe,
showed that politics, with a capital ‘P’ is back in vogue once
again. Following September 11 2001 islam and muslims are an obvious, but
nonetheless demanding, subject and featured in four significant films.
The results are mixed.
Ae fond kiss (director: Ken Loach) gives a distinct view of a christian-muslim
love story based in Glasgow, the last in his trilogy. An incident at his
younger sister’s catholic school brings Casim Khan (Atta Yaqub) abruptly
into contact with young Irish music teacher Roisin Hanlon (Eva Birthistle).
He helps her move her piano into her new flat after her break-up and they
become enamoured of each other. But all is not well in Spain, where they
go on a short break together: he still intends to marry the woman his
parents expect him to.
Although they later reconcile, Casim and Roisin still do not have it easy.
She gets threats from her state-funded, religious school because its board
members object to her sleeping with her boyfriend before marriage. Casim
gets stick from ma and pa Khan for not being dutiful. Enter Casim’s
sister, Rukhsana (Ghizala Avan), who beards Roisin, asking her to stop
seeing him; though Rukhsana is really more concerned with removing an
obstacle to making a good marriage herself than in abstract ideas of family
honour.
Casim’s decision to become ‘more muslim’ is inexplicably
eroded, as Loach goes for the ‘happy ever after’ ending: the
love-struck couple smooch in the final scene. Roisin, an intelligent teacher,
is unconvincing in her ignorance that Casim’s family expects an arranged
marriage and seems to know next to nothing about Asian life and culture
in Britain. Casim is unconvincing in his ‘will he, won’t he?’
vacillating between listening to his friend, Hammid, who say he should
keep a white girl on the side after marriage, or simply dumping Roisin
and getting on with what is supposed to keep his family together. In fact
the whole film is deeply unconvincing and cries out for a sensibility
that derives more directly from the Asian experience. (Ae fond kiss goes
on general UK release on Friday September 10.)
Yasmin (director: Kenneth Glenaan) is set just before 9/ll and is quite
frankly a much more politically astute film. Yasmin (Archie Panjabi),
a care worker, drives her cabriolet to work each day in full Asian gear
from her largely Pakistani neighbourhood in the city, but changes into
western work clothes on an empty moorland road. She goes through the palaver
in reverse every time she returns home. One of Yasmin’s co-workers
(Steve Jackson) would like to get closer to her, but when he discovers
that she is married, to simpleton Faysal (Shahid Ahmed), he is understandably
shocked and backs off.
Once the Twin Towers are hit and destroyed, all hell breaks loose. It
starts at work with alleged jokes (“Yas loves Osama”) and soon
gets distinctly menacing. Blunkett and Labour’s laws ensure that
Yasmin and her non-Asian co-worker get taken in by heavily armed, anti-terrorist
cops; her husband is caught later as he wanders back, unaware that his
innocent phone calls to Pakistan have been enough to condemn him.
Whereas for years she was a non-practising muslim, Yasmin’s experience
of the British state’s ‘justice’ turns her toward islam.
She refuses a policeman’s suggestion that she could be shot of Faysal
by claiming her marriage was forced; instead, she destroys the divorce
papers she had ready for his signature and waits for Faysal outside the
clink until he is released. Yasmin’s younger brother Nasir (Syed
Ahmed) abandons his muezzin duties and declares he is off to Pakistan
and then Palestine to fight on behalf of downtrodden muslims, breaking
the heart of his father, Khaled (Renu Setna). There is no resolution for
anyone in such real, unjust circumstances.
Writer Simon Beaufoy, as in The full Monty, captures the essence and humanity
of the people he shows us. The film leaves us with the feeling that the
pain goes on.
Mamay (director: Oles Sanin) is a Ukrainian film based on a 16th century
legend. Christian Cossack and muslim Tatar forces are at loggerheads on
what is now Ukraine territory. Three Cossack brothers escape the foul
conditions of Tatar captivity; however, they have only two horses. The
third brother runs, but falls behind. It looks like all is up with the
Cossack, for the plains animals are gathering for the kill. It seems he
may be already dead when a Tatar witch-cum-shaman and her child find him.
She gives him life and they become a couple, trying to learn from each
other, despite initial ‘cultural diversity’.
When the Tatar warriors arrive and capture the Cossack, the child saves
him from them. He escapes, leaving behind a pregnant shaman as he goes
toward the christian lands. Director Sanin’s historical spectacle
is an amazingly well-crafted social allegory - a paean to cultural and
human assimilation. The sweeping, poetic flights bear comparison with
the best lyrical renditions of the cinema: Ugetsu Monogatari and Shadows
of forgotten ancestors suggest themselves. Indeed, this work can stand
beside them with ease.
The Hamburg Cell (director: Antonia Bird) has now received an airing on
UK television, its flow interrupted by adverts. Purporting to be based
on the events leading up to the murderous attacks on September 11, the
film depicts the cell, formed in Hamburg among young muslims from different
countries who are studying there, who were to go on to do the deeds.
Although positions are taken and recruits made, those shown are cardboard
cut-outs, mere ciphers on the film’s canvas. Why these young men
(no women) were seduced by thoughts of attaining paradise, in a Sun-like
haze of fanaticism and pornographic desire to have a harem in heaven,
is not clear. Ideology is hazily sketched and descends into rants all
too soon. Disappointingly, no real effort is made to get under the skin
of these terrorists; presumably the fact that those upon which these characters
are based are now dead means the film-maker can dress their minds in whatever
she fancies.
But even clerical fascists have motivations, and it would make a fascinating
film to really get to grips with what makes them tick. This film is not
it. Instead, we are given a melange of characters who do not seem real,
either as a group or in their interactions with each other. Why they would
want to commit these horrific suicidal acts, kidding themselves they were
martyrs, is only superficially dealt with. The thousands who were to die
at the hands of the generally mild-mannered men we see here do not seem
to figure with them very much at all, and thus the film falls down badly.
The credibility gap is too great; cinematic suspension of disbelief impossible.
Jim Gilbert Moody
