Director: Arun Karthick
Cast: Valavane Koumarane
I wrote last week about the ongoing We Are One Film Festival on Youtube, a collaboration between twenty international film festivals across the globe to raise funds for the Covid pandemic by screening specially curated films online. Arun Karthick’s Tamil language film Nasir is one of the films that has made this interesting line-up. Nasir has already won accolades this year, including the NETPAC award for the Best Asian Film at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam (IFFR) and I was looking forward to this chance to finally catch it.
Art-house cinema has generally been a rare commodity in the Tamil film landscape. Merku Thodarchi Malai and To Let are two names that immediately spring to mind from recent times that have embraced this non-conformist movement. Nasir follows in the footsteps of these films and tries to convey a social message relevant to the times, in its own recusant style.
The film essentially tells the story of a day in the life of Nasir (Valavane Koumarane), the lead protagonist. But what is striking here right from the beginning, is the unique transcendental nature of the writing. In the opening scene, the camera focuses a good one minute on Nasir who is about to awaken at the stroke of dawn. It then follows him in agonizing detail, as he goes about his mundane morning routine. We meet others in his household and some of his neighbours, all of whom live in tiny, boxed-in houses of a Muslim neighbourhood in Coimbatore.
We gather that his wife Taj is about to leave town for a few days. Keeping with the flow, we follow Nasir diligently as he sends her off at the bus depot and then, proceeds to the garments shop where he works as a salesman. We wait patiently with Nasir till we see his colleagues coming in for the day, followed by the usual mix of customers with whom he shares a wonderful rapport. We learn that he is a hobby poet, a music aficionado and a hopeless romantic (he still writes letters by hand to his wife when she is away). We also learn about his aged mother who suffers from cancer and a son who has special needs (there is a minor twist in this at a later point). In spite of all these struggles, he consciously maintains a warm, positive vibe about him. He is generally liked, by one and all, young and old. Nasir is basically someone you would take to be your friend in a heartbeat.
The general idea behind this transcendental method of filmmaking is to establish a visceral and spiritual connect between the viewer, the story, the protagonists and their environs. This is achieved through the use of devices like rigid camerawork and more importantly, acting that is not ‘aware’ or is devoid of self-consciousness. Nasir evokes this spirit of transcendental filmmaking brilliantly. As viewers, we blend into Nasir’s life, just like the colours on the fabric he sells for a living.
The film also slowly begins to make us aware of the social undertones it is charged with. There is communal tension brewing, and this particular story is told mostly from the perspective of Muslim neighbourhoods that seem to be wary of increasing Islamophobia and bigotry. What the film actually examines however, is something way deeper. It seeks to understand the effect hate mongering has on people and how it transforms them into terrible unrecognizable personas of themselves.
Sample this: In an early scene at Nasir’s shop, he hears his boss speak loathingly on a call with a friend, about how the Muslim community are inferior to theirs and how they will never have the courage to create trouble for them. But later in the film, Nasir (who is a Muslim of course) asks the same boss for a favour. He is in urgent need of cash and a salary advance will help. His boss replies that he might not be able to provide the full amount requested due to business constraints. However, Nasir may deliver a few blazers ordered by some college students and keep whatever cash he collects for his own use for the time being. He even lends Nasir his Scooter to help make the deliveries, as a token of friendship.
What causes this bipolar behaviour? What made Nasir’s boss, who seems based on the latter incident to be a decent enough man, fall prey to bigotry in the earlier instance? This is the big question the film seeks to answer, and through it, also examine the effect of such bigotry on apolitical people like Nasir who want nothing to do with it.
Nasir is a wonderful immersive film that puts us in the shoes of the protagonist and makes us introspect about things we are often reluctant to lend an ear to. Taking cognizance of all its eccentricities and its aim to be subversive, I still felt there could have maybe been a little bit more in terms of conflict in the drama, which would have made this an even better film. I would have loved a touch of unpredictability, some chaos to the order perhaps. But as things stand, it is still a splendid effort. It is a glowing addition to Tamil cinema’s art-house collection that deserves the world’s attention and all the accolades.
Overall rating: 3/5
