Director: Zakariya Mohammed
Cast: Indrajith Sukumaran, Grace Antony, Joju George
Language: Malayalam
Satire can be a powerful tool, especially when employed in films. An unpleasant opinion voiced with a smile and some humour definitely burns fewer bridges. And when the subject being opinionated on is the art of cinema itself, its utility soars further. Zakariya Mohammed, who’s directed and co-written Halal Love Story (streaming on Prime), aims to employ this nifty device here and make a bold statement on a sensitive topic that’s haunted the industry for decades.
Don’t we all remember countless films that ran into religious controversy, with adherers of one faith or the other crying foul over hurt sentiments? How liberal is art anyway and is society justified in setting thresholds and expecting a line to be drawn? Is it even possible to make a film that’s perfectly compliant with every single religion’s rulebook? These are some questions Halal Love Story seeks to answer through its protagonists who hail from a Muslim NGO and decide to embark on an ambitious filmmaking project. Their idea of an acceptable film though is only one that stays within the boundaries of Islam, or in other words, a ‘Halal’ film.
An early scene is cheeky. When one of the characters asks a DVD store manager for film recommendations, Majid Majidi’s Iranian masterpiece Children Of Heaven is suggested, a reminder of how the world’s most conservative Islamic country has also supplied arguably some of the finest modern day cinema. That was of course a professional feature film made on a sizeable budget. The film being attempted by this group inside our story is anything but. For starters, it is crowdfunded, and not through Wishberry or one of those sophisticated websites. They’ve collected cash through door to door canvassing and its barely enough to pay off the director’s fees. Members of the NGO and other locals are asked to chip in as actors to help balance the budget and this is where they hit the first stumbling block. The roles of the lead pair would have to be played by a real life couple, it is argued, for only that will be justifiable to the conservative Muslim audience for whom the film is intended. Shereef (Indrajith Sukumaran) and Suhra (Grace Antony) emerge as the chosen ones and further, their home itself is picked as the filming location.
Predictably, what ensues is a comedy of errors and it’s a lot of fun to witness. Actors losing cohesion with their props (a postman leaves his bicycle behind in the scene), an eccentric sync sound recordist with hilarious attempts to capture ambient sounds (Soubin Shahir in a riot of a cameo) and best of all, substituting Kerala’s favourite Kattan Chaaya (Black Tea) in lieu of alcohol for a drinking scene have you in absolute splits. These misfires have the exact opposite effect on the director Siraj (Joju George) though and he can’t seem to catch a break with these amateurs!
The film takes a strange turn after this point however. There’s a rift between Shereef and Suhra after an incident at an acting workshop (where Parvathy makes a cameo appearance). This estrangement results in their real life turning into an eerie echo of the scenes they enact in the movie. Siraj is already headlong into a matrimonial crisis himself and is fighting for the custody of his young daughter. Generally, these sub plots would be a welcome addition to any film in order to add depth. Things backfire though when these tangential narratives start upstaging the film’s focus plot. This is sadly the case here. The script invests a substantial amount of time in resolving these interpersonal conflicts and there is a sense of digression from what was initially envisioned. Even the writing is a little pedestrian and tedious in these parts. You would think an acting workshop sequence, for example, would be ideal for injecting some much needed comic relief. But the treatment here is curiously dry and dreary.
Halal Love Story is a flawed film but an important one. The questions it seeks answers to deserve a lot of merit and do present a conundrum in a country like India that’s equally passionate about matters of both film and faith! Zakariya Mohammed is also no doubt a talented filmmaker, as is evidenced from his blockbuster debut film Sudani From Nigeria, that was themed on football. It is Halal Love Story, however, that actually ends up playing out as a story of two halves.
Overall rating: 2.5/5
