|
|
|
| January 9, 2006 | Monday | Zilhaj 8, 1426 |
Karafilm Festival draws crowds
ISLAMABAD, Jan 8: There has been an overwhelming response from the residents to the fifth Kara Filmfestival that opened at the NIC auditorium here on Saturday. The two-day film festival was organised by the Dawn Group of Newspapers. As many as 14 fresh and scintillating movies were screened on Saturday and Sunday. However, the public was particularly interested in the Iranian film “Gilaneh”, the Indian film “Iqbal” and in the latest adaptation of the 18th century social satire of Jane Austen’s famous novel “The Pride and Prejudice”.
The 82 minute colour film directed by Rakshan Bari Etemad, turned out to be a superb movie.
If there is any preaching in the film, it is against the horrors of war and how conflicts wreak and the main individual lives causing trauma to the soldiers and scars to their next of kin who spend their entire span of life in repairing lives of the survivors of war.
Ismale ((Bahran Radan) is the son of widow Gilaneh (beautifully portrayed by Fatemah Motamed Arya), who has been drafted to fight on the Iranian side in the war against Iraqis. His brother-in-law, Rahmani, married to his sister Maigol, has already left for the war front.
Maigol is expecting her first child and turns hysteric in wait for Rahmani. But Gilaneh is tending her in the best way she could although she is full of grief for the going away of Ishmael, and she constantly prays for his safe return.
But Maigol perishes in an Iraqi bomb attack of Tehran, and Ishmael is ravaged with wounds and is almost invalid.
The scene shifts to 16 years later when the US had already landed in Iraq. There is no male member in the village home where Gilaneh lives in the Iranian countryside with her son Ishmael, whose nervous system is impaired and has to spend his days lying in the bed. Sometimes, in a fit, Ishmael beats his breast in great sorrow and suffering.
At the same time the mother is trying to nurse her son with all means and strength she is capable of — though her health is also draining away. But she performs this task and that’s the point made in this film.
In showing the mother’s selflessness to go to extraordinary length in the care of children, the film pays tribute to all mothers of the world in addition to presenting a forceful statement about the futility of wars. No one wins the war but individuals, but it disrupts families.
The 127 minute film “Iqbal” screened at the NIC auditorium on Sunday has been declared a film that would seduce the spectator and as such has been declared the best Indian movie produced in the year 2005.
It presents a brilliantly crafted story of an 18-year deaf and dumb boy whose great passion in life is playing cricket on the national team of India. The boy’s father is a farmer, who cannot afford the expenses and gets decried for his Islamic religion. However, Iqbal gets massive support from Khadija, his mother, who believes the boy’s dream would be redeemed one day.
The film has been called the jewel in the gold ring of director Nagesh Kuknoor though the director has also been accused of unnecessarily jostling in realms of predictability at several spots.
Director Joe Wright’s famous adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel has won a number of awards, including the best cinematography as well as music. A number of literary personalities have accused the film of taking a number of liberties with the 18th century author’s social satire on the scorn meted out to women of that age.
A certain Colorado university English professor very nearly wrecked the film by accusing the leading actor Matthew MacFayden and the star Keira Knightly of bawdy sexuality. There was no need for passage of love affairs as played out in the film between Elizabeth and Darcy.
However, Knightly is more than an eye candy in the film - she plays out her part really well.
|
|
|
|
