Pakistani cinema is changing. As more and more filmmakers from the urban middle classes continue to extend the recent extraordinary revivalist run of Pakistani films, the scope of mediation and perceptions in this respect are broadening as well.
This was quite apparent in Farjad Nabi and Meenu Gaur’s Zinda Bhaag. Released in 2014, the film is now available on DVD.
Zinda Bhaag is very much part and parcel of the class make-up and social landscape of Pakistan’s new wave cinema, in which films play like stark art-house mediations on life but bear the soul of lively commercial cinema.
However, unlike their new wave contemporaries, directors Farjad Nabi and Meenu Gaur not only entrenched their film outside the confines of middle-class settings, but their main characters also come from lower-middle/working-class backgrounds.
The story is founded on the ubiquitous obsession of Pakistanis from these classes (especially from the Punjab) who illegally make their way into European countries for the purpose of earning a lot more money than they ever could in Pakistan.
The film follows the daily lives of a group of friends who hold low-paying jobs and dream of one day crossing into a European city to match the tales of financial glory they have been told about those ‘brave and clever ones’ from their area who managed to slip into Europe and were doing quite well.
The film also points out the dangers this practice constitutes: many young aspirants are caught and jailed in foreign countries, or die tragically while trying to enter an alien country as illegal immigrants.
A mosque in the congested residential area of Lahore where the film takes place is often heard announcing on the loudspeaker news of the deaths of young men who have died trying to slip into Europe.
But Zinda Bhaag is not a serious commentary on the perils of illegal immigration or the kind of desperation and obsession that makes so many Pakistanis take all kinds of dangerous routes and avenues to enter more prosperous countries.
Instead, it’s a black comedy, giving Farjad and Meenu enough space to deliver quick-fire jabs at certain incidents that take place around the characters’ everyday lives but are the complete opposite of the on-ground realities of the class to which they belong.
Directors Farjad Nabi and Meenu Gaur.In a 1970s Pakistani film, a lower-middle/working-class character would have judged this clash by rhetorically denouncing the opposite reality as something that was pitched against his class as an exploitative tool.
But Zinda Bhaag’s main characters (the friends) do not judge what is not in their reach. Instead, they either aspire to make it their own or completely ignore it.
The film’s main character – a lowly-paid, 20-something electrician, Khalidi – and his buddies get drunk and dream about Europe (and in the case of Khalidi, also about a girl he has met in a public bus where she was selling handmade soaps called ‘Facelook’).
They do not have a political ideology. They can’t afford to. But their goal is clear: to somehow slip into a Western country and drive a taxi. That’s what most young men from their class dream about.
Fighting to find shelve-space for ‘FaceLook.’Each one of them is focused on discovering ways of making more money than what their day jobs pay. The guys work as cooks and electricians; they gamble at illegal and shady gambling dens; and some even work on the side for a local thug (played by Naseeruddin Shah).
The girl (who eventually becomes Khalidi’s girlfriend) aggressively makes her way from selling soaps on buses to making sure they find some space on supermarket shelves. They’re not just dreamers, but doers as well, despite going against the grain of middle-class morality and ethics in their ways.
Europe chalo! Kahlidi and friends drive an electric repair company’s van to fix rich people’s machines.The film’s characters do not judge the unreachable or the unaffordable as something to do with the exploitation of their class. But in situations where they are placed in surroundings that are almost completely alien to the social and material dynamics of their class, the film takes the opportunity to satirise certain traits and idiosyncrasies of the new Pakistani middle classes.
For example, in a scene where Khalidi and his colleague/friend enter a huge bungalow to fix a malfunctioning air-conditioning unit, there is a women’s dars taking place in the house.
Dars– a gathering where a religious preacher delivers commentaries on relegious rituals and traditions – has increasingly become popular among a growing number of urban middle-class women in Pakistan, especially in the last decade or so.
Such gatherings (in the above-mentioned context) usually take place in bungalows owned by well-to-do families and are attended by women who also come from wealthy and middle-class backgrounds.
The film implies that the piety of the middle classes may actually seem alien and distant to the concept of faith of the classes below them. But, again, the film’s main working-class characters, when they come across this particular aspect of the alien and the unaffordable, do not judge. Instead, they are simply amused when they see the main lady preacher at the dars tell her swaying audience:
‘Remember, sisters, we have to think in terms of horizontal and vertical.’ Then prompting the gathering for a response, she uses swift hand gestures to ask: ‘So, sisters, the horizontal is us, and the vertical is …?’ The gathering enthusiastically answers: ‘God!’
Khalidi and his friend simply look at each other and raise an eyebrow, as if trying to figure out what on earth the rich aunty is going on about.
The film also takes a tongue-in-cheek dig at the popularity of Indian TV soap operas that have become all the rage in the region. We see one particular soap called ‘Auqat’ in the film. Every time a TV is present in a scene, it is running this soap. The families of the friends watch it, people in the market watch it; heck, in one scene, even the dreaded thug is watching it! Again, when it comes to satirising certain aspects of Pakistani society, the film lets the scenes do all the talking without using any explanatory dialogue.
The wise gangta.In another scene, we see some of the friends working as waiters and cooks at a rich man’s party. The film once again puts them in a situation that is alien to the class they come from.
At one point, we see a rich man ordering a security guard to check the pockets of the servants who might have stolen his BlackBerry. It turns out that the device was actually taken away by the man’s young son to play games on. The episode is quickly forgotten, but not for those who were humiliatingly interrogated for a crime that they had not committed.
In a 1970s Urdu film, the humiliated would have launched into a speech lamenting the arrogant ways of the rich. But in Zinda Bhaag, the cooks and the waiters launch into a song (in the kitchen) culled from poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s ‘Hum Daikhien Gey’ (We Shall See) and authored for the film by novelist and journalist, Mohammad Hanif. It’s an old revolutionary tune. But, in the film, it is used as a statement expressing irony because over the years this poem has become a favorite of the classes and ideologies it was originally pitched against.
This becomes even more apparent when we see guests at the party discussing ‘revolution’ and ‘change’ for the people they have just interrogated for stealing.
The film continues to play like a black comedy. It is objective to the point of being cynical. Because that’s what reality is like in the situations it is set in.
The characters do not enjoy any cinematic exaggerations. They are quite real, warts and all. But they have an emotionality and spirituality that seems to be inherent in their class and which can even be catered to by the simple act of sitting quietly outside a Sufi saint’s shrine. Thus, the film finds no reason or need to show them praying or thumping their chests while waving a flag. In fact, they are only seen praying at the funerals of boys who came back dead.
The cynical aspect of it is played to the hilt in a powerful sequence in the film that shows one friend getting hold of the passport of a fallen friend, getting the picture changed, and slipping out, only to die and leave the passport for another friend to use.
The film gets darker as the main hero, Khalidi, gets even more desperate to slip out.
He first tries the legal way, but his visa is rejected. Then he tries to get a student’s visa for a hefty price from a shady travel agent, but fails to gather the amount needed for such a visa.
All the while, he gambles frantically, betting on horses, playing flush and games of dice. He gets frustrated and loses his girlfriend and buddies in the process – until the body of a friend arrives who died halfway through his journey to a European city. This is the moment one would expect the film to take a moralistic turn and make Khalidi realise the perils of his obsession and cynicism. Not quite.
The last scene sees him approaching the grieving father of the dead teen. Again, the audience is by now expecting Khalidi him to break down and renounce his obsession. But something else happens: He seeks the dead boy’s passport.
To many people, the film’s ending would seem inconclusive, especially in a South Asian film. But though Zinda Bhaag rejects the notion of a happy ending, it’s not a tragic ending either.
It’s just what heroism would mean to an anti-hero.