Slackistan (2010)

As home productions are quite rare, the Pakistani audience is always excited whenever there’s a new project coming out, whether it be a completely local production (like Slackistan) or an Indian production with a local star as the lead (Tere Bin Laden.) However, when one certain movie gets banned in Pakistan then the curiosity around it increases, and so do expectations.

Perhaps that’s what ruined Slackistan for me: the high expectations that surrounded the movie and, more importantly, its stunning cast

The movie revolves around a group of youngsters in their 20s who live in Islamabad. Not only do they live in Islamabad, but they are also from the more elite group of people there. Therefore their lifestyle is very different from most 20-somethings. Clearly these guys do not represent all of Islamabad’s youth. That’s probably where the controversy stems from because the movie shows the culture and lifestyle of individuals who probably make up less than one per cent of the Pakistani society. This ‘burger’ phenomenon is considered almost a bad thing because it means that these people converse mostly in English, are rich, and aren’t really aware of, or affected by, the rest of the country.

So Hasan, (Shahbaz Shigri) Sheheryar (Ali Rehman Khan) and Saad (Osman Khalid Butt) are three friends who waste their time going to shisha cafes during the day and parties at night. They have no clue what they’re doing with their lives and are simply living in the moment.

Hasan, the lead character, wants to be a filmmaker one day, but is demotivated by the lack of inspiration that exists around him. He finds no cinemas in his city, and when he goes to find Robert De Niro’s Mean Streets he instead is told by the movie wala to watch Meet the Fockers instead.

Sheheryar, AKA Sherry, is your classic showda (show-off) guy. He likes expensive things, women and borrowing money from a rich loser to get him these things. The rich loser, Mani, gives him money in return for exclusive party invites, a step into the posh social scene, and a grand social status. Sherry is as fake as he can be.

Unfortunately, Saad, the comic relief, doesn’t really have too many dialogues or important scenes, which is a bummer because he’s quite adorable and fun to watch on screen.

The two female characters, Zara (Shahana Khan) and Aisha (Aisha Akhtar) are the best friends who tell each other everything which is where we discover what’s going on in their lives: Zara is suffering from ‘peer pressure’ as she tries hard to fit in, using excessive make up and a strange fashion sense to help her. She also seems a little boy-crazy, when she ends up having coffee with some random stranger who claims to be a Prince of some place. She is also busy running after a guy who doesn’t care about her.

Aisha is the quiet, sensitive one. She likes nature, is soft-spoken, and wants to go abroad for further studies. Her dilemma resides in her confusion when it comes to her best friend, Hasan. She’s not sure how she feels about him when another guy pops up in her life, Owais (Adnan Malik). While Hasan is clearly in love with her, Aisha is sort of seeing someone but hesitates in telling Hasan because she’s not sure how he will react. That’s it. That’s the story of Slackistan. Clearly the movie lacks a script.

What it also lacks is humour. Even though the writer has tried to incorporate a few jokes in here and there, the movie is otherwise pretty dry. The movie is only 90 minutes long, but it feels painfully stretched out.
Perhaps the real reason behind Slackistan’s success is the cinematography. The lighting, the editing, the tastefully shot scenes showing Islambad’s scenic beauty is what makes the film really watchable. It feels more like a documentary when Hasan is narrating in the background, because the screen is showing visuals of market places and people in the streets, but that’s perhaps the purpose of this movie.

Slackistan isn’t really a Pakistani version of Dil Chahta Hai. It’s more of an introduction to a more serene side of Pakistan, away from all the violence and commotion that is repetitively shown on news channels all over the world. It tries to show the so called evil elite and their horrible ways, which include alcohol, late nights, being lazy and all these things that are labeled as ‘wrong’ which is why the movie was banned. What about local movies that show rape, terrorism and all the other things that are also wrong in our society? Why don’t those movies get banned?

As Slackistan has received international recognition, it’s good that the movie successfully shows Pakistan’s alter-ego without being disrespectful. However, it’s not an entertaining watch and unlike Dil Chahta Hai does not merit repeat viewing at all – Manal Faheem Khan

Rating – 2 out of 5

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2010, Genre – Drama, Country – Pakistan, Language – Urdu/English, Producer – Hammad Khan,Shandana Ayub, Director – Hammad Khan, Cast – Aisha Linnea Akthar, Rafey Alam, Osman Khalid Butt, Uzair Jaswal, Shahana Khan Khalil, Ali Rehman Khan, Adnan Malik, Adil Omar, Khalid Saeed, Shahbaz Shigri

Bol (2011)

Shoaib Mansoor’s Bol has been launched with much fanfare, with well-attended premieres in both Karachi and Lahore. Now, definitely showing at a cinema house near you, it is awaiting the verdict of the people. Box office results are so much like election time, but unfortunately in Pakistani cinema candidates are few and far between.

Will Bol repeat the smashing success of Khuda Kay Liye or will it falter? If it’s not a box office bonanza, it will become the first non-starter Shoaib Mansoor has seen in his career. The showman with the Midas touch hasn’t had any of those. Be it making plays like Fifty Fifty or Alpha Bravo Charlie, mentoring, producing and writing lyrics for the phenomenon that were the Vital Signs, the Supreme Ishq video starring Iman Ali as a rebellious Anarkali or his debut feature Khuda Kay Liye which was the first Pakistani film in decades to pack cinema houses around the country – anything he does is a gold mine.

The reaction after the Bol premieres has been mixed. There are people who love the film for the punch it packs. Hipsters are of the opinion that it’s a like a TV play and that they would rather see an entertainer. There are literary types who find Bol to be far more sophisticated and nuanced than Khuda Kay Liye which they thought was “too preachy”. Of course, the select audience that attends premieres is hardly a barometer for how the film will do. In the trial runs that Geo had done before Bol’s release, they found that around 80 per cent of the women in the audience had tears in their eyes by the end of the film. So they are hopeful about it being a success.

Strangely enough, there wasn’t such a mixed response for Khuda Kay Liye – one remembers the general consensus about that film was that there is no way that a film without typical songs, dances and hardly any comedy would run. However the box office had other ideas. Khuda Kay Liye made history. Now it’s Bol’s turn to prove its mettle.

If you are inclined towards stories well-told, Bol will get you. It will fill you with dread, parts of it will make you smile, and through it you will open your eyes to things that we accept with blinkers on. If you are planning on watching it, don’t be late – miss the first ten minutes even, and you will have a hard time realizing what is going on. Shoaib Mansoor is a superb storyteller, but he has never written a script quite so tight or as layered.

In it’s entirety, Bol is a narrative made by a girl named Zainab (Humaima Malick) at the gallows. Her last wish is to tell her story to the media and thus the world, which the President of Pakistan has okayed.

Zainab’s story begins with her birth in the conservative household of a hakeem, whose father had moved to Pakistan after Partition and instead of coming to Karachi like most Delhi walas he had remained in Lahore because it reminded him of the city he called home. By the time Zainab’s father the irate, ill-tempered, moralistic, fiery Maulvi Shafaatullah (Manzar Sehbai) takes over as hakeem, the age of the clinic has arrived and he is struggling to make ends meet. On the other hand, he has a wife and a quest for a son that leads to seven daughters being born, none of whom are allowed to work because of his firm belief that a woman’s place is in the home. As Zainab narrates in the film “Khandaan mein log barhtay gaye aur har maheenay paisay kam parhtay gaye. (As the family members kept increasing, our monthly income kept falling short).”

It’s a plight many will recognize. The wife who submits to the will of the husband and seven daughters who follow accordingly, except Zainab, the eldest, outspoken one. Then there is Ayesha (Mahira Khan Askari) who is childhood sweethearts with their Shia neighbour (Atif Aslam). And another five mouths to feed. Eventually, there is a son, but he is born a hermaphrodite. The women love Saifullah (Amr Kashmiri) or Saifee as they call him and they are all he knows – his father, very much a part of Pakistan’s ghairat (pride) brigade doesn’t let him out. It is his violent death that sends his father’s life spiraling out of control and leads him to teach children how to read the Quran in the infamous Heera Mandi. He is reduced to making money at a kotha run by Sakha Kanjar, who is brilliantly played by Shafqat Cheema. The prize possession there is the tawaif Meena (Iman Ali).

And so unfolds a superb, orginal story about double standards, the inherent evil in the hypocrisy that pervades our society. Things we hardly talk about and the better-off and well-heeled barely know about apart from articles written in magazines and newspapers bemoaning the state of the nation. Through a superb cast of characters, Shoaib Mansoor humanizes a wide range of issues. The inherent conservatism and sexism in Pakistan that keeps so many women at home and its futility in this day and age. The hypocrisy that drives a daughter to lie to her father to meet the man she loves through Atif and Mahira. There is the tension between Sunni and Shia shown through Maulvi Shafaatullah’s disdain for his easy going Shia neighbour Akhtar Husain (Irfan Khoosat). There’s a hair raising portrayal of the ugly norm of londaybaazi when Saifee runs into some uncouth truck drivers and its psychological aftermath. There’s the culture of pimps prostituting their women and the compromised lives they lead with a morality unique to their kind. All these issues collide head on forcing Zainab’s to speak out eventually.

Bol is without a doubt one of the most powerful films ever made in Pakistan. It is a step up from Khuda Kay Liye in every sense. It is perhaps even more controversial because rather than tackling fundamentalism which is such a global political issue, Bol is an incisive portrayal of different personal beliefs and the tensions that electrify our streets and neighbourhoods. Bol may not be a happy film, but it is one that grips you from start to finish. There is never a dull moment. It’s fast paced and strangely enough action packed – it’s just that all the action is emotional.

People expecting a huge performance by Atif Aslam may be disappointed. Atif’s Mustafa stays with you at the end for his naturalness, but Bol is very much about an ensemble cast without focus on any one person. It is Humaima’s film at the beginning and end, but umpteen stories are woven through it and there are crackling performances all around, especially from Manzar Sehbai who is fantastic as the repressed and oppressive Maulvi who is evil in his do-gooder self-righteousness. Amr Kashmiri is delightful as Saifee and Iman Ali’s performance as a nautch girl lights the screen. Mahirah is as natural as Atif and they bring light heartedness to the film with their spontaneously enacted love story. Humaima is dynamite as the lead character. However, the biggest star of the film remains Shoaib Mansoor’s masterful script that brings it all together.

In Pakistan, where dramas rule the entertainment sector, he is a master storyteller whose fan base spans generations. He writes his own scripts and while one often hears the new breed of directors saying that his technique is dated, that he is a television director and not a film director, the point is that he has filled the cinema once and chances are he will do it again. It’s not the direction that is the highlight of a Shoaib Mansoor film, it’s the content. He tells the people of Pakistan their own story. He gives them their issues. He forces them to open their eyes to their own malaise. If this is what pulled them in to Khuda Kay Liye, then Bol should do just as well. It’s a far better story.

It will be interesting to see the kind of business Bol does. After all, Khuda Kay Liye didn’t have commercial, escapist Bollywood cinema to contend with when it was released in 2007. That would come one year later and pack cinema houses again. Will Pakistani audiences go for a hard-hitting story about themselves in the face of the glitz and glamour from across the border? This is the acid test.

For lovers of cinema, Bol is a must watch – for it’s gutsy screenplay, brilliant performances and the fact that you will not have experienced any film quite like it before – Muniba Kamal

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2011, Genre – Social/Drama, Country – Pakistan, Language – Urdu, Producer – GEO Films, Director – Shoaib Mansoor, Music Director – Shoaib Mansoor, Atif Aslam, Sarmad Ghafoor, Cast – Humaima Malick, Iman Ali, Atif Aslam, Mahira Khan, Shafqat Cheema, Manzar Sehbai, Zaib Rehman, Amr Kashmiri

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Bol’s Official Trailer

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Armaan (1966)

Armaan was released on Friday, March 18, 1966, at a time when the country was echoing with protests against the Tashkent Agreement signed by President Ayub Khan and the Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.

It was said that a war ‘won’ on the front had been ‘lost’ on the table. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the dissident foreign minister who was generally identified with a hard line stance against India, had just received an overwhelming ovation at the Lahore Railway Station from a multitude of his admirers.

Then, as the film opened in Naz Cinema, Karachi, and across West and East Pakistan, it captured the imagination of the entire society. Did the masses recognise, unconsciously, their deepest ideals in the fantasy about an educated and principle-centered aristocrat stepping down from his ranks for courting an orphaned girl of humble background and himself getting transformed in the process?

At least that was the gist of the hero’s journey from the festive Ko Ko Korina to the mature Jab pyar mein do dil miltay hain; and from the light-hearted rendition of Akele na jana by Ahmad Rushdi to the symphonic and cataclysmic orchestra accompanying the voice of Mala, at the end. In retrospect, one may say that this was not very unlike the expectations that people were beginning to develop from Bhutto around the same time — regardless of whether or not the politician lived up to the ideals given by poets.

The film was the first Pakistani release to become a “Platinum Jubilee” (running for 75 cumulative weeks). The middle class, usually reluctant to go to the cinema, got attracted in large numbers (in some ways this shift had already started with Saheli four years earlier and Naela the last year but it reached its climax with Armaan). The hairstyle of the writer, producer and actor Waheed Murad became the default for that generation. Conservatives and liberals, rich and poor, educated and the illiterate, were equally mesmerised.

The legends spawned by Armaan spread wide and were going to prove lasting. Fellow film-maker Nazrul Islam, in his greatest film Aaina (1977) eleven year later, named the heroine Najma (played by Shabnam) after the role played by Zeba in Armaan. In a subsequent film, Nahin abhi Nahin (1980), Nazrul not only named the main character Armaan, but even persuaded the lead actor Faisal Rehman to use this as a real name (recently, Faisal has directed a television sequel to Nahin abhi Nahin where the protagonist Armaan, now grown up and teaching in a college, confronts the spirit of Allama Iqbal and seeks answers to questions about the existence and destiny of Pakistan).

If Armaan is one of the pegs around which threads of our collective consciousness are tied then it very well deserves that prestige. It was an offering from well-educated and imaginative youth who respected their culture and wanted to bring a healthy change through the unity of imagination. Waheed had an M.A. degree in English from Karachi University and his obsessions included James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Henry James (one of his dreams was to make a stream of consciousness films and he arguably achieved it three year later in one of his productions).

In developing the story of Armaan, he drew upon Cinderella, She Stoops to Conquer, The Taming of the Shrew, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, but he used his sources ingenuously for creating a brevity that effectively conveyed the messages ingrained in the greatest cultural movements of recent history (attachment to Iqbal ran in Waheed’s family, since his grandfather Manzur Ilahi Murad was an acquaintance of the poet-philosopher in Sialkot).

Director Pervez Malik, who also wrote the screenplay, had a master’s degree in film-making from California. Camera work, imagery and symbolism were on a par with some of the best masterpieces of that time: one could identify allusions to La Dolce Vita and Hiroshima Mon Amour. Later, Pervez was going to win a Pride of Performance Award for his patriotic films, including a trilogy about the awakening of the masses through the power of love: Anmol (1972), Dushman (1974) and Pehchan (1975). The second of these is also significant because a year before India discovered “the angry young man” in Deewar (1975), Pervez Malik had created the icon here and articulated its social context with much more clarity and boldness than elsewhere.

Masroor Anwar, who wrote the dialogues and lyrics, had received a fresh impetus from his work in the 1965 war. A fascinating aspect of the lyrics of Armaan is that each song from this film, although so moving as an expression of ordinary love, can also be interpreted as a national song.

Consider, for instance, Akele na jana. The Ahmad Rushdi version is probably what every Pakistani may like to say to Pakistan: “Diya hosla jis nay jeenay ka hum ko….” (you are a beautiful feeling that gave us the courage to live; you are the certainty that never leaves the heart; you the hope that lasts). It should surprise no one that the same Masroor Anwar later gave such national songs like Sohni dharti and Wattan ki mitti gawah rehna.

Sohail Rana, who gave music to Armaan, came from a literary family. His father, Rana Akbarabadi, was a renowned poet and had approved of his son’s passion only on the condition that the talent should be used for perpetuating noble values. Sohail not only composed music for memorable national songs, including Apni jaan nazr karoon, Sohni dharti and Jeevay Pakistan but was also destined to set music to Hum Mustafavi Hain by Jamiluddin Aali, which was adopted as the national anthem of the Islamic Summit Conference in 1974 (it retains that status and is played wherever the summit is held).

In the 1970s and the ’80s, Sohail was best known to the youth in Pakistan through his popular television programme in which he taught music and good manners. Armaan, in a way, had started with him. One night in 1963 or 1964 he heard a melody in his dream. He woke up and wrote it down. The words that were given to it eventually were, Akele na jana…

The rest is film history, though sadly unwritten for the most part – Khurram Ali Shafique

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1966, Genre – Drama, Country – Pakistan, Language – Urdu, Producer – Waheed Murad, Director – Pervez Malik, Music Director – Sohail Rana, Cast - Zeba, Waheed Murad, Nirala, Rozina, Tarannum