Nasir is an amazing film that left me stunned after its 24 hour appearance on the We Are One online festival last Saturday. In a nutshell this is a film by a non-Muslim Tamil filmmaker from Coimbatore about 12 hours in the life of a Muslim sari-seller in the city. The film opens and closes with a static long shot of the central character lying in roughly the same position but in a different location, context and framing. It’s a brave and ultimately powerful device. I won’t describe the final shot but sadly I think you will not be surprised when it arrives.
Coimbatore is the second largest city in the state of Tamil Nadu, an industrial centre with a population of 1-2 million. It’s located close to the western border of the state with the Western Ghats to the west and north. The great majority of the population is Hindu but there is a significant Muslim minority of around 8-9% and a similar but slightly smaller Christian minority. Unfortunately, the rise of Modi and the BJP with its right-wing Hindu nationalist ideology is now evident on the streets in Coimbatore – even though the BJP has no political representation in the city. There have been outbreaks of sectarian violence in the city in recent years.
Nasir lives in very modest accommodation outside the city centre with his wife, his sick mother and a young disabled man. It isn’t clear who this young man might be but it is seems he is a relative who Nasir has adopted after the boy’s parents were killed in an accident. Today, Nasir accompanies his wife to the bus stand where she gets on a long distance coach to visit family for a few days. He then gets to work in time to open the shop with a colleague. The director, Arun Karthik, is a young man from Coimbatore making his second film. The first was shown at Rotterdam International Film Festival and this second film was made with support from the Hubert Bals Fund associated with the festival. This year Nasir won the Netpac Award for best Asian film. Like Karthik’s first feature, Nasir is a shortish film of less than 80 minutes – but he crams a great deal into that running time. The film is presented in Academy ratio (1.33: 1). I couldn’t discern any specific reason for this but it works and the simple compositions are very pleasing.
This account of daily life, offered in detail, is almost like Bresson in conception, but didn’t feel ‘Bressonian’. Nasir seems like a decent human being who sometimes goes to prayers at the mosque, who smokes beedis for relaxation and who takes pleasure in writing poetry for his wife – which proves popular with his co-workers who ask him to read out extracts. Nasir is actually a character from a short story by Dilip Kumar, the Chennai-based writer (not the star of Hindi cinema), titled ‘A Clerk’s Story’ and written during the 1990s. The focus on the small details of Nasir’s day means that the growing unease about sectarianism seems to ‘filter in’ rather than to be presented directly. As he walks through the streets, Nasir seems unaffected by the amplified voices, Hindu and Muslim, propagandising. He overhears his boss make provocative anti-Muslim remarks about any resistance to a planned Hindu march through the streets. But the same boss tries to help him get an advance on his wages – which Nasir needs for his various pressing financial problems.
It’s difficult to convey how Karthik is able to present simple tasks in such a way that we engage so easily with Nasir’s concerns. But we (i.e. non-Indian audiences) do suspect that perhaps we don’t completely understand all of the cultural referents we are shown. I was struck with the images of Ganesh on the streets. I understand that the Ganesha festivals are celebrated widely across India and especially in the West and the South, but I’m most familiar with them as depicted in films set in Mumbai. Since Modi’s rise, I find the excitement roused by the festival processions to be increasingly disturbing. A blog post by our old friend Srikanth explains some of the aspects of the film which I didn’t completely understand and also offers fresh perspectives on the film (it’s worth reading the comments too). Srikanth also discusses the ending of the film. I’ve read several other reviews and this film offers a good example of how a specific decision about how to present a single incident can lead to very different readings of the overall narrative. Nasir strikes me as a successful and important film that should be seen and discussed. It’s not an ‘easy’ film in the sense that it is not an entertainment narrative or a straightforward ‘social’ film. But I don’t think it is an ‘art film’ as such. What it requires is simply that a viewer watches it without too many preconceptions. (I should also commend Saumyananda Sahi as the cinematographer on the film.) I hope Nasir is seen widely within India and in international markets.
The Case for Global Film 