1st watched 4/14/2009 – 5 out of 10 (Dir-Tareque Masud): Dreary yet valiant effort at portraying Pakastani Muslim life thru the eyes of a village in the late 60's during a time right before the country gained it's independence. The story is really more about the village and a specific family then it is about the politically-charged culture of the time but it does eventually affect the village. The family's devout Muslim father sends his son to an Islam school at the beginning of the movie to keep him away from Hindu influences from other villagers. The boy's school life is really the main storyline thru most of the movie as he begins a friendship with another boy who has his own difficulties and he learns the Muslim ways. He returns home occasionally to see the family crumbling under the strict father's rules. The father is a holistic medicine man who refuses certain medications and basically causes his daughter to die and his wife separate emotionally from him. This attitude never does him much good, but he never learns from it. The movie is slow moving but interesting mainly because it's neat to learn about other cultures. The village converse about the goings-ons in the bigger cities but that's really all we see about the political issues.(I guess the movie makers didn't want to show the violence but it might have helped move the story along better.) The movie overall is just not quite good enough for me to recommend due to the slow moving aspect and the fact that they left some characters lost without telling us what happened to them. It is nice though hearing from a country that we don't hear from often in the movies.
Review of The Clay Bird
