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THEAT RICS: Resurrecting the last mountain
In youth everyone is a dreamer. Politician cum media man, Javed Jabbar dreamt of making a classic in the genre of the middle-of-the-road cinema. He was short on funds but not on ideas. The film Beyond the Last Mountain, the first and the only English language movie in Pakistan but not without its Urdu version, didn’t turn out to be a classic but certainly veered off the beaten track. It featured emancipated and realistic women, a far cry from the decked up dolls one sees on the Pakistani screen, even if none of the women — Marianna Haq, Muneeza Hashmi (now General Manager PTV, Lahore) and Shameem Ahmed — was a central character of the film.
The movie created a political ambience when no Pakistani movie, except W.Z. Ahmed’s 1954 film Roohi, had anything to do with politics. Beyond... had some unusual shots, such as the one of the train on the old Kotri Bridge, and above all it held promise. One had expected that the film maker, Javed Jabbar, would continue to make feature films, but he didn’t. He went back to documentaries and commercials and then drifted towards politics, social work and writing books. One hopes his daughter Mehreen who has made a good start on the small screen will sooner than later graduate to the larger screen, taking over from where her father left off.
A point worth mentioning about the film is that its two versions, Beyond the Last Mountain in English and Musafir in Urdu, were both shot individually
Last week MNJ Communications which Javed Jabbar set up with two friends in advertising in 1969, hosted a function where a video of the movie, Beyond the Last Mountain was shown to an audience that included some who were associated with the film, which was screened in 1976. The function marked the 25th anniversary of its release.
Unfortunately, not even one complete print of the movie is available, which is not as bad as is the case with most movies of the pre-eighties period, that have been totally lost to posterity. Baji and Armaan are two such examples, which is not to mean that all those movies whose prints or negatives have been lost were truly worth preserving.
The story of Beyond the last Mountain is one of a politically motivated murder set in the traumatic mid-seventies, when people had become disenchanted with the government which had started on promises that were never fulfilled — the buzzword was accountability, but it was also the most flouted concept in actual practice.
The hero Hamid Ahmed, enacted by the young Usman Peerzada, is in search of his father’s killers, a plot not too novel because we have seen scores of movies where the leading man searches, finds and brings to justice the killer or killers, but what makes Beyond the Last Mountain different is its treatment. The writer imparts realism to the scenes. The shooting of the movie, done entirely out of studios and on locations, both indoors and outdoors, gives an unmistakable touch of authenticity to the movie.
True there are songs but, for one thing, they are few and, for another, they are situational. Sohail Rana’s tunes are catchy. The mehndi chorus led by Mehnaz is truly lilting, but one feels now, as one felt then, that Habib Wali Mohammed was not an apt choice. He sounds woefully the same each time. Rana could have found better singers — Mehdi Hasan was a force to reckon with and so was Ahmed Rushdi and both of them had sung remarkably well for Rana. The late Obaidullah Aleem’s poems in blank verse were outstanding and in keeping with the mood of the scenes. One wonders why other film makers didn’t subsequently select Aleem, for he was strong both in style and in substance.
It’s quite unusual to resurrect a movie. One wishes producers of other films with some merit could emulate Javed Jabbar’s example. JJ has gone a step further by publishing a volume on the making of the film. There is a brief biographical note on the film maker, then there are comments by the author and two of the principal performers, Usman Peerzada and Marianna Haq. One could see their comments on the video. It was fun watching Peerzada sporting a huge crop of hair and bell bottoms and very slim. Success and the passage of time have inflated his waistline if not his ego. The video and the printed volume also show pictures taken during the shooting. The book has been illustrated profusely with stills from the cinema. But what makes it a collector’s item (it will soon be available at bookshops) are the screenplay and the shooting script of the movie.
A point worth mentioning about the film is that its two versions, Beyond the Last Mountain in English and Musafir in Urdu, were both shot individually. Normally all our bilingual films — Urdu and Punjabi — were shot in one language and dubbed in another. Thank Heavens that era is over now because one can never have a perfect lip sync, which takes us to the point that the dialogue of Beyond... and Musafir were both recorded on locations. They weren’t dubbed in the recording studios.
One last point: Javed Jabber and his partner could recover only two-third of the Rs 1.8 million that they had spent on the movie. JJ was sadder but wiser, as he never forayed again into the realm of cinema. If he does now he’ll be in a position to comment on the political scene with much more knowledge and understanding.
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