Just don't talk about it in the neighbourhood

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2023

#21 :   جوائے لینڈ (Joyland)

Saim Sadiq’s film explores the unsettled social and sexual identities of a widower and his children with delicacy and tenderness.

Hmmm - "the unsettled social and sexual identities of a widower and his children", eh?  Can't wait! This is our first Pakistani film though - the entire country has only managed three mentions on the blog so far, with two of these being down to Arooj Aftab who I really should listen to more often.

Well - it's certainly something. We follow three generations of one family living under one roof - Amanullah (Salmaan Peerzada), his two married sons Haider (Ali Junejo) and Saleem (Sohail Sameer), their wives and Saleem's children. And, well, all I can really tell you is that stuff happens - but it certainly goes to places I wasn't expecting it to.

The film walks a fine line because a lot of the subject matter is very melodramatic - a lot of it is to do with the pressure to conform to societal norms and the way that some people choose not to do so here is somewhat extreme. However, as The Guardian tells us there is also "delicacy and tenderness" - a lot of it is handled extremely sensitively. Unfortunately, what there wasn't for me was an awful lot of interest - yes, these people were struggling with their lives but I just didn't really care how things were resolved. And I certainly didn't need over two hours of it, thank you very much. Yes, I'm a harsh man - deal with it.

It is well acted though - Ali Junejo has the main role and does a reasonable job in making you believe the unbelievable. By which I mean that so much happens to him that I found myself rolling my eyes - but I felt his pain whilst he was being made to jump through all these random hoops. And, in quite a large cast, pretty much everyone does their part - you really do believe it's a family where everyone provides consistent input, for better or worse. It's also well shot - I may not have been totally on board for the job that Saim Sadiq did as the writer, but he did a great job as the director and this was the first Pakistani film to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival.

I did think it a lot more progressive than I'd expect a film from Pakistan to be and Wikipedia tells me it had quite a number of issues in getting out there. The censors initially passed it, but then the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting got involved and completely banned it. There was then actually quite a backlash to the ban, with Malala Yousafzai writing a beautiful defence of the film in Variety. Which meant that the Prime Minister got involved and set up a committee to review the whole thing, with the film eventually being released after the removal of some "objectionable erotic" scenes.

So, there's a lot to commend this but I just didn't quite engage with it - and I suspect you'd probably think the same. But I'm happy for you to tell me I'm wrong - it's currently available to rent in all the usual places.

#22 - An odd, but interesting film
#20 - WTF is this?

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