IN R The Blood of Hussain

Scan page 4

So few examples of Asian cinema are ever shown in major cinemas in Britain that the Gate 2 Cinema (Brunswick Square, WC1) presentation of The Blood of Hussain is very welcome.

The film, by the Pakistani director Jamil Dehlavi, was shot mostly in Pakistan and the shooting finished only weeks before the seizure of power by the reactionary military dictator General Zia.

The conception of "the film, therefore, had a grimly prophetic quality.

It is about such a coup (of which there have been three in Pakistan's short history) and its aftermath.

The film's portrayal of the cynicism and corruption of the military dictator and the time servers around him is presented with subtlely but is still chillingly convinc. ing.

Social Essentially the film is about the Pakistani social dite rather than the masseswho appear only coincidentally.

lis main-and only full tzo-haracter are two iT*ses. Laze landowners.

Out i et. a smooth Jazza meat, the other, Hussam la kind of hero of the film) becomes an opponent of the oppressive regime.

He supports his peasants when they are driven off the land by the army and ends by fleeing with them to the mountains where • all are eventually massacred by. the dictator's troops.

The politics of the film are closely involved with Islam.

Hussain is presented (through a childhood contact with a religious mystic) as an inheritor of the mantle of Hussain, the grandson of the prophet Mohamed who himself fought against the tyranny of a usurping Caliph.

Confusing

Tha: the film airs present Islam as a prog sive and purifying forci clear-though, as in the f Zia to esis ial scene when demonstratior self-flagellatio: connection se fusing.

Uneasy relation

The film also becomes confused because its three elements-a political drama on the coup and the dictatorship, a story of Islamic mysticism and the love life of the English wife of Hussain's brother-coexist often in a very uneasy relation with each other, even though the editing and indeed all the technical elements of the film) are beautifully managed.

Also the sexual themes of the film are insufficiently explored: the English wife's confident and mendacious double life with Hussain's brother and a senior military officer (tender towards her and murderous towards the people); the brother's reaction to the discovery of his wife's adultery -the rape of a prostitute; and Hussain's marriage with the daughter of a peasant, an event in which she has no say.

All of these illustrate aspects of the oppression of women in modern Pakistan but leave the watcher unsatisfyingly confused about what Dehlavi was attempting to say.

They do show, however, the richness of content in what is in many ways an interesting and moving film.

a political turns into n the exact ems very con-