THEATRE guru Sohail Malik claims he loves to watch movies and is particularly fond of all David Lean flicks. Says Malik, “Earlier, I also used to watch French and Italian movies regularly as well, and find Italian director Federico Felini’s movies really amazing.”
Among his favourite French movies is Sundays in Cybele, which, he recalls, he had watched in a morning show several years ago. He also finds the Russian version of Hamlet, a film he saw during the Russian Film Festival, to be very powerful. Malik feels that all European movies have had a great impact on him. He recently attended a seminar in Salzburg, titled From Script to Screen, where some memorable movies were shown and Malik, in his words, enjoyed it to the hilt. Among the films that impressed him at the seminar was also Satya Jit Ray’s The World of Apu.
Among the more contemporary movies, his favourites are The Beautiful Mind and Chicago. One of his favourite directors is John Schlesinger, who has made some big Hollywood flicks including Far from the Madding Crowd, Billy Liar and Midnight Cowboy.
As for the Indian films, Malik says he used to watch them when he was young and even enjoyed them then, but has outgrown them now. His wife Shaiyanne chips in that he used to watch them primarily because he was living in Paris in those days and was homesick. Although Malik admits to having seen “a lot of Pakistani movies in the past”, he says he “never really enjoyed them.”
But it is theatre that is Malik’s passion, and he remembers the good old days when he had the stamina to see a matinee play, followed by a movie and then a show, followed by a late night movie. His favourite play is Les Miserable about which he raves thus, “It has a very powerful story. When I saw it, I simply couldn’t conceive how they could do such a long novel in musical. It has no dialogues and is entirely operatic. What an unbelievable classic! That is one musical I would like to do in Pakistan with the original music translated in Urdu.” He is also very fond of Shaffer’s plays.
Malik does not get much opportunity to listen to music, though. Of the little he hears, he likes jazz and Western classical. Claims Malik, “Lately, I have also begun to listen to fusion music, especially jazz with tabla, which I heard for the first time when listening to a recording of a concert, and have since started quite a collection.”
Malik claims he has been to very few live concerts, so much so that he did not even go to a performance of Rolling Stones that had taken place in his school days in a town close to his in England, to attend which all his friends had even scaled the school walls. However, today he does regret having missed the opportunity to see Mick Jagger perform live. Malik is fond of reading historical novels and one of his favourites is the prolific Finnish writer Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian.
Says Malik, “That was the first historical book I read, when I was 15, and I loved it because there is a lot of philosophy in it and you feel as if you are transported to that time period. The novels that have had an impact on me have all been strong on philosophy and the recurrent theme in all Waltari’s books is the fate of humanist values in a materialistic world.”
Classics like Les Miserable are among Malik’s all-time favourites. He also enjoys the works of D.H. Lawrence and Robert Graves. Says he, “The latter’s I Claudius about the Machiavellian aspect of achieving power — in this case, by playing dumb — is a fascinating book on how Claudius came to power. The White Goddess and King Jesus, also by the same author — the former linking Christianity’s concept of Trinity to Egyptian mythology, and the latter a narrative account of the life of Jesus — are also great books.”
Lawrence Durrell is another of his favourite writers and he particularly likes his Alexandria Quartet. James Joyce’s Ulysses is another book that Malik relished.
Among Malik’s favourite playwrights is Tom Stoppart, who is “one of the finest living playwrights”. He is particularly fond of his play The Real Thing, and in fact, even did an adaptation of it, “though it was very difficult to do”.
THEATRE guru Sohail Malik claims he loves to watch movies and is particularly fond of all David Lean flicks. Says Malik, “Earlier, I also used to watch French and Italian movies regularly as well, and find Italian director Federico Felini’s movies really amazing.”
