Faraaz Movie Review & Analysis by Prathyush | Hansal Mehta
hello I’m pratyush and today I want to talk to you about Hansel Mehta’s Faraz starring zahan Kapoor Aditya raval and juhi Papa ‘s Shahid and umerator are strange films with Muslim protagonists based on lives of real people one of whom decided to turn away from terrorism and run headlong into socio-legal work and one who decided to dig his heels into that very terrorism both these films are extremely intentionally dry they do not have the emotional code to rope you into the story because they play out listlessly without arousing crests or debilitating caves death in these
movies comes swiftly and without noise people are pushed into life-altering decisions with the same softness as breath mehtar renounces stakes in a plot line full of them these films operate beyond the Baseline desire to have the audience cheer or jail to be clear Mehta isn’t interested in humanizing the terrorist either because humanizing them would require trying to explain why they behave the way they do Mata does not care for the reasons psychological or otherwise he’s merely disinterested in dehumanizing them with Faraz he tests his will a little because you have two people fighting ideologically with
bodies strewn between them based on the 2016 terrorist attacks in Dhaka in a posh Cafe that killed 29 people the film plots itself along the grooves of the
attack Mata frames long takes of Faraz walking getting kissed by his mother a woman of remarkable power and power is played by Juniper and there is something ominous in the way for Us’s kindness is expressed especially the shot of him walking into the light his Islam isn’t apparent this might be because of his class this might be because of his country Bangladesh or Muslim majority Nation Mehta doesn’t give us answers not even clues for us is however forced to brandish his pacifist Islam in front of the terrorists the bad Muslims a band of five headed
by nebras played by Aditya raval son of Parish raval who moves so easily so softly between cunning and kind in interviews Hansel Mehta mentioned that is not how he sees these two characters as protagonists and antagonists the moment you craft this really tiring good Muslim versus bad Muslim framework onto two characters one becomes a protagonist and the other the antagonist it is delusional to expect it to be otherwise you cannot make a neutral film about terrorism when so much of it hinges on explaining why violence is bad and this is where the film loses its
Reserve its dignity there is a whole stretch where Faraz and nebras are having an argument and it’s so dreaded so rot so familiar so repeated so blunt and tiresome there’s something grotesquely self-congratulatory about these little righteous liberal film ideals which take a serious political issue treated with that Cavalier dance of dialogue promising a broader conversation which never really comes the film should be that conversation and for us isn’t that film I I wants to be that film it really wants to milk a moment of heroism and Retreat into its quietness and there is something frustrating
here in this scene this desire to sell Islam is a desire to repackage it reappropriate it as a paragon of Peace but we must look beyond the edges of this exchange and for us for it is a film that though derived from this one moment has a Welter of Life which it uses to shade a mythical moment a cinematic moment into something more rounded more brimming the film begins with terrorists getting bloody but there is nothing foreboding or even malevolent about this staging think of how the attacks of 26 11 Begins for example sure one
of them is struggling to get up one of them can’t stop pumping one of them looks at himself in the mirror convinced of his Beauty this is all captured in one rattling take by cinematographer pratham Mehta they eat like we have more days to live for they talk like children they want to be treated like adults but they demand attention like children with power the power is the gun this is what Mehta does best he shuffles you into a world that does not seem threatening does not demand heroism though it very much is threatening and
it very much demands his hero Mehta isn’t interested in teasing your adrenaline he isn’t interested in pulping your heart but Matt has minimal standards the background score doesn’t play only the gunshots do his film makes most emotional sense in the gestures in the silences and the small acts between the bigger acts but the moment characters speak either it’s the oddly sonorous dialogues or the pathetic accents the chinks in his narrative Armory are barefaced the scenes when abras explains his Fierce belief in the Islamic State are written with such Simplicity the way the terrorist banter has
his forced youth in it we’re told nibras and faraj used to play football together but the world’s diverged why a more Curious writer filmmaker would try or at least imply a reason instead of repeatedly regurgitating the snap of History every few seasons how did he trip and fall into a bloodletting ideology the brass becomes this hazy outline a collection of gestures disdain at Perfume having alcohol in it tenderness towards kids sudden bursts of kindness to bugs or spare lives sudden grunts of gunfire maybe matter does not want us to think of nipras as a character
but a foggy shifting study and violence and that makes every appearance of nepraspot unpredictable and unsullied soon a monotony descends over these shifting Sands because you do not know what the film is going after what it wants to be what it wants to say the police and the various teams sought border patrol jostle for information what do these terrorists want even we want to know if all they wanted to do was produce a bloodbath and leave they could have left they’re not wanting Ransom or the release of political prisoners these young boys with guns enter
Bob bullets and stay the night terrorizing Those whom they ever loved to be alive this is a story so singularly insistent on the present it forgets that even its characters have a past from which their beliefs emerged and some even a future but the thing about the intensely present tense film is that it requires an intensely present tense cinematic language not one of hand stretching langa which is Mehta’s go to grasp there is a very provocative yet tender moment towards the end where all of them the terrorists and the terrorized pray together just the men
of course suddenly the good Muslim bad Muslim tag of War feels futile that bad Muslims are Muslims too their Badness does not make them less Muslim in the same way one’s goodness does not make one more Muslim this is what I mean when I say the beauty of mathas films lurks in the silences when he refuses his characters the edgeless straightened certainty of dialogue cinematically it’s dryness it’s a distracted wobbling between being dramatic and being subtle being humorous and being ironic Rings a false note but there is something else that’s unsettling the mother of one
of the characters a Muslim girl who’s dressed in shots and is regularly called a and is slapped by the terrorists vehemently opposed this film I can see why the film’s existence now provokes a moral question they might be honesty in telling a story without sensationalizing its roots but there also might be dishonesty in trying to reverse engineer a story out of an intention what did you think about Faraz do leave a comment about your thoughts and don’t forget to like the video subscribe to reviews and more and watch more foreign
