Nasir Review: a photo of the film. (Image courtesy: Youtube)
Throw: Koumarane Valavane, Sudha Ranganathan
Director: Arun Karthick
Evaluation: 4 stars (out of 5)
Nasir, directed by Arun Karthick, is one of two narrative feature films from the selection of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival for the current We Are One Global Film Festival
Time stands still and weighs heavily Nasir, the second-year release of writer-director Arun Karthick (Sivapuranam). A languid day in the life of a clothing store seller in Coimbatore is the heart of the dark film. But the insignificant daytime routine of man takes place alongside a rising tide of fanaticism during a religious festival that brings out processions and rallies in the streets, all incited to incitement and explosions of violence.
How long does it take for an unsuspecting ordinary man who has absolutely nothing to do with the turmoil around him to be sucked into his vortex? The Tamil-language film, an impressively mature work by a young filmmaker in a unique cinematic sense, presents a story from dawn to dusk in which nothing seems to happen. Yet many do.
Karthick’s sparse script draws audiences deep into the universe of the eponymous figure, which consists of dead chores, while alluding in dribs and drabs to the severely flawed environment that surrounds him. Hatred is on the rise, but Nasir (Koumarane Valavane) is too benign and too immersed in his immediate responsibilities to fully understand the inflammatory nature of hate speech spat out through microphones.
Nasir is a conscientious and sensitive man who writes poetry in an environment which militates against the softer nuances of human expression. But it shows no visible sign of tension even though all the signals surrounding it warn of the venom that is rapidly spreading through the air.
Nasir, one of two narrative feature films depicting India at the We Are One world film festival, lacks accessories. But its impact is not small. Karthick employs the art of a demanding miniaturist to capture the granular details of Nasir’s life. It intermittently switches to the larger columnist mode to draw public attention to the anonymity that ordinary people struggling to survive share with marauding crowds waiting for their time before hitting. The tastes of the old hope that getting lost in the crowd will protect them from trouble; the latter are sure to have security in numbers and can therefore wreak havoc at will.
Adapted from a short story by the Tamil Gujarati writer Dilip Kumar, which opens at half past three in the morning, Nasir adheres to the calendar of the written text. Shortly after Nasir woke up to the pre-dawn call to prayer, a table clock in his little house shows 6:03 am. But from there, director Karthick gives up time markers, relying instead on the protagonist’s activities to give us an idea of the time of day.
The exceptional day of Nasir is presented in the form of vignettes which unfold like long-term rituals, rich in detail. It starts with his morning ablutions before going to the terminus to see his wife (Sudha Ranganathan), who leaves town for three days on a bus at 8:30 a.m. Along the way, he picks up two arms of jasmine flowers for the woman he describes in a poem as “more dear to me than life”.
And then it’s time for the store to open. The shutters are raised, the store is dusted, things are put back in place, and Nasir garlands a bust of Lord Krishna placed near the box and some framed portraits on the wall, one of which is a composite of a mosque, a Hindu Seer and Jesus Christ placed side by side.
The day unfolds in the same vein as buyers and other visitors arrive at the store and sellers are busy. Nasir runs several errands over the next few hours, including a trip to the mosque for afternoon prayers and a lunch and nap break at home.
As he tries to wink at noon on a carpet on the floor, Begum Akhtar sings Kis pooche humne kahaan chehra-e-roshan dekha hai / Mehfil mehfil dhoond chuke hai gulshan gulshan dekha hai gulshan on the soundtrack, a delectable juxtaposition of familiarity and poetry. In a way, the device also indicates the distance that exists between the Nasir sweetness and the sadness that deepens all around.
The off-screen speeches of racist fundamentalists calling for “one nation, one religion” provide the soundscape that surrounds Nasir’s daily routine and one cannot go further from the mellifluence of Akhtari Bai than that.
Filmed in a very austere style by the director of photography Soumyananda Sahi, Nasir is infinitely more atmosphere than action. Gautam Nair’s sound design forms the backbone of the film. The montage of the late Arghya Basu gives the film a languorous rhythm which serves to underline the monotony of Nasir’s existence on a daily basis.
At dawn, while his wife Taj peels onions and his aging mother scratches a coconut, Nasir leaves the house to fetch tea from a nearby kiosk, buys a packet of beedis, helps the woman to fetch water from the community tap, go home, hear music, brush your teeth, shave and bathe.
The routine of his life, like that of all the little people around him, is nothing to write home about. But not for a moment did he complain. Her life is full of problems. One of them concerns money. His mother is elderly, he has a room for teenagers who needs special care and the debts have to be settled. “I have no grip on life or any grievance”, this is how a poem he recites to his colleagues opens. It refers to “unforgiving time (which) flows in flood”.
Nasir gives off a serenity of sage. He asked his wife before getting on the bus, “Do you really have to go?” It’s the only time he shows a hint of emotion. He reserves the articulation of his most intimate feelings for his poems and a letter which he addresses to his wife a few hours after she left the city.
The atmosphere that surrounds him is a threat he does not even take note of, even when a colleague reveals his majority inclinations unambiguously. As the world around him rushes into fanaticism of manic proportions – this process is revealed in short capsules that reflect a sense of urgency that is at odds with the deliberate pace of the film – Nasir still continues on its own rhythm.
As time flies, he wonders when he learns that the daughter of an old acquaintance who has just returned from Abu Dhabi is about to marry. How could he know that the time he is talking about is completely irrelevant and that the more it flies away, the worse it will get? Nasir is a sincere ode to a man who deserves better – and, by extension, to all humans who do.
(Nasir is available for a week on YouTube from June 6, 7 p.m.)
