L.I.F.E. Just four letters. But pregnant with meaning. So when you have films that are a stirring portrait of life, you should leave everything you are caught up with, and make sure you land up at the auditorium to watch these internationally acclaimed films. And that’s how it was when I was witness to a few critically acclaimed films from Pakistan, Turkey, Finland, South Africa, Iran, the US and the UK at the second Bangalore International Film Festival organised by Suchitra Film Society and the Government of Karnataka. Out of the 8 films I saw, two films stood out for their candour. Here they are:
1. Khuda Ke Liye: No film in recent times has been so well made. Not only is it so very relevant in today’s times, it’s also a film that has some great music, eye-opening cinematography, and a very engaging plot. That the actors did justice to the role made director Shoaib Mansoor’s job even easier. Set in Chicago, New York, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it chronicles the life of a non-resident Pakistani (shall we say, NRP?) trapped by a father who wants her to marry a Pakistani, even though she’s set her sights on a British lad on campus. A conniving father takes her to Pakistan on the pretext of going back to his roots only for a fortnight, but ends up ganging up with a few fundamentalists who hold her captive in Afghanistan. The Pakistani son that she’s forcibly married to was earlier a singer of Western music, but later becomes a devout muslim courtesy, a moulana who leads him on the path of destruction and terror. The rest of the film is about how she fights for her rights, how her rights are violated and she has a baby from him, and how he realises his folly and comes back into the mainstream. At no point does the director try to be one-sided. The moulana is given as many justifiable dialogues as his detractors. The pace is racy, and is anything but boring. Importantly, you go away with a message: everyone has a viewpoint and everyone are right in their context and in their way of thinking. Now the choice is yours. Whether to follow an age-old custom blindfolded or rebel and march to the beat of your own drum.
2. Heartbreak/Lovelorn: This Turkish film lasting 150 minutes was as engaging as it was insightful. The story of a teacher who comes back to his native place after his retirement and finding himself in the middle of a divorced woman and her child being pursued by her overzealous wife-beating husband. Not that he doesn’t have problems of his own. His own son is living a life of comfort, but doesn’t intend to keep his father at home, and is much relieved when the father has already rented a room elsewhere and living on his own. What’s more, realising that his children are of no help, the father takes the help of his friend and drives a taxi at night to beat insomnia. The best part of this film is that it isn’t judgemental. It showcases the dilemma of every personality showcased in the film. There are no black or white characters. There is a shade of grey in each of them, and it’s well portrayed out here. At the end, the message is simple: we are trapped in the world of our own desires, not realising that we could well be stifling someone’s else’s.