08.09.2004

Culture clashes in Edinburgh

'P' for for politics is back in vogue at the Edinburgh Film Festival, reports Jim Gilbert Moody

The Edinburgh International Film Festival, like this year’s fringe, showed that politics, with a capital ‘P’ is back in vogue once again. Following September 11 2001 islam and muslims are an obvious, but nonetheless demanding, subject and featured in four significant films. The results are mixed.

Ae fond kiss (director: Ken Loach) gives a distinct view of a christian-muslim love story based in Glasgow, the last in his trilogy. An incident at his younger sister’s catholic school brings Casim Khan (Atta Yaqub) abruptly into contact with young Irish music teacher Roisin Hanlon (Eva Birthistle). He helps her move her piano into her new flat after her break-up and they become enamoured of each other. But all is not well in Spain, where they go on a short break together: he still intends to marry the woman his parents expect him to.

Although they later reconcile, Casim and Roisin still do not have it easy. She gets threats from her state-funded, religious school because its board members object to her sleeping with her boyfriend before marriage. Casim gets stick from ma and pa Khan for not being dutiful. Enter Casim’s sister, Rukhsana (Ghizala Avan), who beards Roisin, asking her to stop seeing him; though Rukhsana is really more concerned with removing an obstacle to making a good marriage herself than in abstract ideas of family honour.

Casim’s decision to become ‘more muslim’ is inexplicably eroded, as Loach goes for the ‘happy ever after’ ending: the love-struck couple smooch in the final scene. Roisin, an intelligent teacher, is unconvincing in her ignorance that Casim’s family expects an arranged marriage and seems to know next to nothing about Asian life and culture in Britain. Casim is unconvincing in his ‘will he, won’t he?’ vacillating between listening to his friend, Hammid, who say he should keep a white girl on the side after marriage, or simply dumping Roisin and getting on with what is supposed to keep his family together. In fact the whole film is deeply unconvincing and cries out for a sensibility that derives more directly from the Asian experience. (Ae fond kiss goes on general UK release on Friday September 10.)

Yasmin (director: Kenneth Glenaan) is set just before 9/ll and is quite frankly a much more politically astute film. Yasmin (Archie Panjabi), a care worker, drives her cabriolet to work each day in full Asian gear from her largely Pakistani neighbourhood in the city, but changes into western work clothes on an empty moorland road. She goes through the palaver in reverse every time she returns home. One of Yasmin’s co-workers (Steve Jackson) would like to get closer to her, but when he discovers that she is married, to simpleton Faysal (Shahid Ahmed), he is understandably shocked and backs off.

Once the Twin Towers are hit and destroyed, all hell breaks loose. It starts at work with alleged jokes (“Yas loves Osama”) and soon gets distinctly menacing. Blunkett and Labour’s laws ensure that Yasmin and her non-Asian co-worker get taken in by heavily armed, anti-terrorist cops; her husband is caught later as he wanders back, unaware that his innocent phone calls to Pakistan have been enough to condemn him.

Whereas for years she was a non-practising muslim, Yasmin’s experience of the British state’s ‘justice’ turns her toward islam. She refuses a policeman’s suggestion that she could be shot of Faysal by claiming her marriage was forced; instead, she destroys the divorce papers she had ready for his signature and waits for Faysal outside the clink until he is released. Yasmin’s younger brother Nasir (Syed Ahmed) abandons his muezzin duties and declares he is off to Pakistan and then Palestine to fight on behalf of downtrodden muslims, breaking the heart of his father, Khaled (Renu Setna). There is no resolution for anyone in such real, unjust circumstances.

Writer Simon Beaufoy, as in The full Monty, captures the essence and humanity of the people he shows us. The film leaves us with the feeling that the pain goes on.

Mamay (director: Oles Sanin) is a Ukrainian film based on a 16th century legend. Christian Cossack and muslim Tatar forces are at loggerheads on what is now Ukraine territory. Three Cossack brothers escape the foul conditions of Tatar captivity; however, they have only two horses. The third brother runs, but falls behind. It looks like all is up with the Cossack, for the plains animals are gathering for the kill. It seems he may be already dead when a Tatar witch-cum-shaman and her child find him. She gives him life and they become a couple, trying to learn from each other, despite initial ‘cultural diversity’.

When the Tatar warriors arrive and capture the Cossack, the child saves him from them. He escapes, leaving behind a pregnant shaman as he goes toward the christian lands. Director Sanin’s historical spectacle is an amazingly well-crafted social allegory - a paean to cultural and human assimilation. The sweeping, poetic flights bear comparison with the best lyrical renditions of the cinema: Ugetsu Monogatari and Shadows of forgotten ancestors suggest themselves. Indeed, this work can stand beside them with ease.

The Hamburg Cell (director: Antonia Bird) has now received an airing on UK television, its flow interrupted by adverts. Purporting to be based on the events leading up to the murderous attacks on September 11, the film depicts the cell, formed in Hamburg among young muslims from different countries who are studying there, who were to go on to do the deeds.

Although positions are taken and recruits made, those shown are cardboard cut-outs, mere ciphers on the film’s canvas. Why these young men (no women) were seduced by thoughts of attaining paradise, in a Sun-like haze of fanaticism and pornographic desire to have a harem in heaven, is not clear. Ideology is hazily sketched and descends into rants all too soon. Disappointingly, no real effort is made to get under the skin of these terrorists; presumably the fact that those upon which these characters are based are now dead means the film-maker can dress their minds in whatever she fancies.

But even clerical fascists have motivations, and it would make a fascinating film to really get to grips with what makes them tick. This film is not it. Instead, we are given a melange of characters who do not seem real, either as a group or in their interactions with each other. Why they would want to commit these horrific suicidal acts, kidding themselves they were martyrs, is only superficially dealt with. The thousands who were to die at the hands of the generally mild-mannered men we see here do not seem to figure with them very much at all, and thus the film falls down badly.

The credibility gap is too great; cinematic suspension of disbelief impossible.