Literary critics are a weird lot. The way they contradict each other’s theories, without making it look like they’re doing it, boggles the mind. For example, one of them says while watching a play ‘the spectator deludes himself into believing that what’s happening on stage is real as long as he is seeing it’. Another takes a different route by arguing that ‘the spectator suspends his judgment for the duration of the play’. A quality work of art, therefore, causes in the viewer a ‘suspension of disbelief’.

Watching the film Mah-i-Mir, written by the well-known playwright Sarmad Sehbai, did not help me agree with either scholar. And the reason is questionable acting and a strange lack of artistic diligence, ironically, on the part of the director Anjum Shahzad.

Let’s make one thing clear at the outset. The criticism becomes inevitable because the dialogue (not the screenplay, mind you) used in the film is super-impressive and bristles with poetic profundity. I can understand that each line given to the actor depicts how the writer, Sarmad, feels about the art of poetry and the role it plays in shaping a sensitive person. Now, it is one thing to write well what’s supposed to be read or played out, but quite another to do justice to it.

Mah-i-Mir has Jamal (Fahad Mustafa), a young poet who earns his living by writing a column for an Urdu newspaper and who is utterly disgusted with the machinations of the literary world. The coffee house that he and his friend (Paras) frequent is also frequented by a man of letters Dr Kaleem (Manzar Sehbai) for whom, and for whose ilk, Jamal doesn’t have much to write home about.

Mah-i-Mir suffers from questionable acting and a lack of artistic diligence on part of its director Anjum Shahzad

This becomes evident on two occasions: first, when he phones and asks a sarcastic question during a TV show on which Kaleem is a participant; second, when Jamal presents his paper at a literary gathering (halqa). Another character of a poetess Naina Kanwal (Sanam Saeed) is part of the whole set up. Unlike Jamal, she is a published author and has clout.

Alongside this comes the not-fully-revealed character (metaphorically speaking) of a girl (Iman Ali) who causes a stir in Jamal’s life, and he starts texting her Urdu verses. By virtue of Naina’s scheming nature, Jamal gets into trouble (financial, mainly) only to be saved by Kaleem.

Kaleem gives Jamal one of his books on Mir Taqi Mir, reading which not only enables the young man to comprehend his own wahshat and the inner sanctum of the temple of poetry, but also transport the viewers into the world where Mir, Kaleem’s personal life and his past relationship with a girl (Huma Nawab) are juxtaposed with the situation, especially in the end.

Let’s try and explore the plot of the film. From the get-go Jamal is seen as an agitated but not nonconformist type, angry young man who is dissatisfied with those who rule the literary domain. All his anger is directed against those who try and define literature. The conflict, yes, the conflict, his conflict, it seems (and I may be wrong), is not the conflict of existence but one that is related to the field he is, or likes to be, associated with.

The track of the girl who he partially sees on a public transport bus, too, pulls him into the vortex of life, not nudges him away from it. So, his problem is a literary problem. This is further vindicated when the clichéd character of a newspaper editor stops his column from being published, and he calls up people in desperation to get a job. He is very much a man of this world. Nothing wrong with that, you may argue. What is the conflict then? That, in Hamlet’s words, is the question.

Suddenly, Kaleem helps him in his hour of discomfort, as mentioned above, by giving him Rs50,000 for publishing translations of his poems in an anthology, a fact that Jamal neither questions nor resists. The book on Mir Taqi Mir changes Jamal’s life, but not dramatically [because he is already too dramatic, as the senior chap tells him, about Mir’s wahshat (a nearly untranslatable word)]. It inspires Jamal so much that he almost becomes a disciple of Kaleem and the story moves in flashback where Mir Taqi Mir, in incommodious locales, is seen trying to resolve his issues with a nawab (Alyy Khan) and is intimate with a girl Mehtab (Iman). The climax of the tale is more to do with Kaleem than Jamal. So much for the conflict.

The biggest disappointment in Mah-i-Mir comes in the form of two actors Fahad and Iman who treat their parts like yesteryear nawabs used to treat their baandis. When a good actor is given what s/he perceives as a challenging role, a major portion of their job has to do with homework. This implies that it would not have cost the actors or the makers of the film a bomb to hire someone well-versed in Urdu poetry to train the two young performers on how to recite a couplet without destroying its meter, and with the correct pronunciation. After all, Fahad was playing the part of not just a young poet but of Mir (yes, Mir Taqi Mir) as well. These are brass tacks I’m talking about. If you are making a movie in which poetry features heavily, you cannot ignore the technical aspect of the genre and expect people to overlook it.

Iman Ali is atrocious and the way Fahad Mustafa spews out asha’ar and says his lines sounds as if he is reading news on a TV channel. Also, it is darn difficult to separate the two characters that he plays who, ostensibly, belong to entirely different milieus. The fault lies at the director’s door. He should have gone an extra mile, because after all, it was Sarmad Sehbai’s script that he was trying to execute. He should have been stricter with the artists and more watchful. How can Naina Kanwal utter a phrase like “I’m flattered” in decent English and then a few scenes later pronounce the word ‘column’ as ‘kaalam’? He should have known that when Fahad recites the line ‘saari masti sharaab ki si hai’ then he should also have said the line from the same ghazal ‘haalat ab iztirab ki si hai’ with similar stresses and pauses. Instead, he breaks the line into haalat and the rest of it. This is just one example.

For his part, the director should have known that if you are going back in time, only costumes and a poky set are not enough. You need to create the right ambience for that. Never for a moment does he go outdoors to give the viewer an indication that it’s 18th century India he’s showing — which would have added an aesthetic dimension to the flashback. But it required hard work, I guess. There’s a difference between a television play and a movie. The latter is all about depth, visual depth.

Manzar Sehbai is the saving grace of the film. It is he who lends meaning to the story, because while Jamal’s conflict is bamboozling (whether he wants his book to be published, or get hold of the mysterious girl, or just change the face of society), Kaleem hiding behind the wall of literature to heal a personal wound comes across as relatively plausible. He speaks Urdu well, to boot, and does not suspend his disbelief … as an actor.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 15th, 2016