Nasir Analysis

Nasir

Directed by: Arun Karthick

MAMI Year Round Programme Home Theatre

In this film, we just be with Nasir for a day and experience his daily life which is shot in an Avant-garde style where even visuals of daily chores like turning on a gas stove and going on a scooter, are shot in an artistic way and we see static shots lingering for way more than they would in films that we regularly see. Capturing the milieu of the era is definitely a responsibility with film makers and many don't care about it, on the other hand this film is entirely about the milieu. It sometimes feels like this film is a tourism for privileged foreigners who watch this in film festivals. We either see extreme close-ups or we see distorted angles or extreme wide angle shots of these daily chores and we see them in all ways except in a way we are used to watching them. The most interesting part of the film, is how Nasir is casual about the bigotry all around which might seem shocking to us, because he actually is used to it. We hear bigotry in speakers of the street where party workers are saying such things, we see random people around talking such stuff and we don't see a lot of it, most of this is done in the sound design and the post production.

This film reminded me of Ryan Coogler's directorial debut, Fruitvale Station which has the exact same plot set in a different world, with different kind of a bigotry. There it is race and here it is religion. Both the films don't try to hard to make us empathize with the characters so that when the explosive endings happen, we cry. If it takes us to love them on a personal level for us to feel bad about such racial and religious killings, then it's even more tragic than the events. In this film, we follow Nasir throughout the day and we know a little bit about him and the ending leaves us baffled about how casually this person was killed.