Vera Drake and Jennifer Abbott discuss The Corporation

Pedro Almadover and the New Politics of Spain.

The Legacy of Frank Capra

A Second Look: Touchez pas au grisbi

THE ART AND POLITICS OF CINEMA

THE TAQWACORES A IN DEPTH VIEW OF EYAD ZAHRA’S NEWEST FILM

I want my films to explode with Life: An

Interview with Mira Nair

The Power of Female Solidarity: An Interview

with Jennifer Abbott

Matters of Race: An Interview with Orlando Bagwell

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CONTENTSArticles

4 Pedro Almodovar and the New Politics of Spain

by Geoff Pingree

16 The Legacy of Frank Capra

26 A Second Look: Touchez pas au grisbi by Martha Nochimson

39 The Taqwacores by Sascha Aktar

Interviews

10 I Want My Films to Explode with Life: An Interview with Mira Nair

by Karin Badt

20 The Power of Female Solidarity: An Interview with Ousmane Sembene

by Richard Porton

28 The Life and Times of the Corporation:An Interview with Jennifer Abbott

by Dennis West

34 Matters of Race: An Interview with Orlando Bagwell

by Barbara Abrash

Film Reviews

Vera Drake 43 reviewed by Leonard Quart

Maria Full of Grace 44 reviewed by Vojislava Filipcevic

The Manchurian Candidate 44 reviewed by Robert Sklar

Book Reviews

Sontag & Kael 60reviewed by Scott Foundas

Hollywood Italians 60reviewed by Marco Calavita

New Readings 60reviewed by Bill Krohn

Rites on Realism 61 reviewed by Leger Grindon

28

THE TAQWACORES A IN DEPTH VIEW OF EYAD ZAHRA’S NEWEST FILMA Rummani Fi lmwork s product ion; produced and directed by Eyad Zahra;

c inematography by JP Perry; edited by Joshue Rosemnfield; or iginal music by

Omar Fadel ; starr ing Bobby Naderi , Noureen Dewulf , Dominic Rains, Nav Mann

and Ian Tran.

39.

“ T h e r e w e r e m o m e n t s wh e n i c o u l d n t wat c h . A s c e n e

b e tw e e n J e h a n g i r a n d Y u s e f h a d m e b aw l i n g . . . "

- M i c h a e l M u h a mm e d K n i g h t

E yad Zahra’s The Taqwacores is

the product of a strange mixture

of fantasy and real i ty. I t is based on a

novel by Michael Muhammad Knight (who

co-wrote the screenplay) and depicts a

f ict i t ious hard-core punk Musl im scene. The

novel , which was or iginal ly self publ ished

and excerpted in underground zines,

actual ly inspired the formation of several

Is lamic punk bands, with names such as

Osama’s Tunnel Diggers, in some sense

creat ing fact out of f ict ion. The f i lm tel ls

the story of Yusef, a strai t laced Pakistani-

Musl im engineering student in search of

housing for the new term. He ends up at

a ver i table den of in iquit ies: the house

of a group of Musl im punk s in Buffalo,

New York . The f i lm centers around Yusefs

encounters with his housemates and their

di f ferent takes on Is lam and ident i ty.

41.

jihad“ THAT WAS MY

THE STRUGGLE BETWEENME AND BY NUTS“

C h i e f a m o n g t h e p u n k s i s J e h a n g i r (Dominic Rains), the f i lm’s ant ihero, spor t ing an

i m p re s s i v e M o h a w k d ye d i n b l o o d l i k e h u e s , a n d

of ten wearing a studded leather jacket (al though

he is inexpl icably shir t less for most of the f i lm).

He attempts to take Yusef under his wing as a

guide to enable him to navigate the al ien terr i tory

that is the house of the Taqwacores. A dark and

brooding character, Jehangir spouts verses from

the Koran in a phi losophical manner and exudes

a devi l ish char isma that every youth-f i lm hero

must have. Jehangir has an expansive vis ion of

Is lam, one that does not exclude his propensity for

a lcohol and women. “That was my j ihad,” he tel ls

Yusef at one point , “ the struggle between me and

my nuts.” He is revered by the other housemates,

and is for the most par t their spir i tual leader.

Jehangir ’s major antagonist and r ival for

Yusefs loyalt ies is Umar (Nav Mann), a pur ist , with

the letter X car ved onto the back of his hands. His

version of Is lam is closer to what Yusef knows. Umar

constant ly refers to a t ime “before,” when the house

was not in i ts current state of disarray, when things

were run dif ferent ly, due to the presence of a more

or thodox and “pious” man who has long since lef t .

We see Yusefs conf l ict as he gets caught between

Jehangir and Umar, the latter becoming more

vicious and violent as the f i lm progresses, and the

Taqwacores inf luence the house more and more. The

l iv ing room of ten ser ves as a mosque dur ing the day,

whi le rowdy punk s converge there to par ty through

the night.

There is a constant negotiat ion between

dif ferent versions of Is lam throughout the f i lm, which

leads to a f inal , brutal c lash of worlds. Yusef for the

most par t remains neutral and, despite being led

down paths of introspect ion and quest ioning what

he has always known, he ul t imately st ick s to his

core bel iefs. Perhaps the most f leshed out and, as

a result , interest ing character in the f i lm is Rabeya,

played by actress Noureen Dewulf , an unident i f ia lble

gir l sheathed head-to-toe in what is known

a”shult t lecock burka,” which is the garb of choice of

only the most or thodox of Musl ims, and which spor ts

a fabr ic mesh in f ront of the wear’s face in order for

them to breath, and i f they are lucky, to talk . Rabeya

is a walking paradox, with her r iot grrrrr l att i tude and

vei led body.

S h e c h a l l e n g e s a c c e p t e d

Musl im precepts. Of note is her att i tude towards

a notor ious Koranic verse, 4:34, which is of ten

interpreted in a way that gives men car te blanche to

beat their wives. Much to the consternat ion of Yusef,

Rabeya has simply blacked i t out in her copy of the

Holy Book . This is an act of blasphemy, of course,

as Musl ims bel ieve that the book must be venterated

and kept in pure, c lean place at a l l t imes. Rabeya

memorably announces, however, that she “ didn’ t

need that one anymore,” and, af ter much careful

thought, decided to “fuck i t . ”

N o b o d y k n o w s w h y s h e w e a r s

t h e b u r k h a , w h i c h s h e h a s a d o r n e d w i t h p u n k-

i n f l u e n c e d p a t c h e s . a n d i t i s a s u b j e c t o f m u c h

d e l i b e r a t i o n t h r o u g h o u t t h e f i l m . To w a r d s t h e

e n d , J e h a n g i r h a s a n e p i p h a n y , s a y i n g “ I k n o w

w h y Ra b e y a w e a r s a b u r k h a . . . f o r t h e s a m e

r e a s o n I h a v e t h i s , ” p o i n t i n g t o h i s m o h a w k .

J e h a n g i r ’ s e x p l a n a t i o n i s s u r p r i s i n g l y b a n a l .

H e h a s a p p e a r e a d t o b e a p r o p h e t f o r t h e

d i s e n f r a n c h i s e d a n d o n e l o n g s f o r h i m t o s a y

s o m e t h i n g m o r e c o m p l e x . Th i s i s a p r o b l e m f o r

t h e f i l m a s a w h o l e , w h i c h n e v e r f u l l y e x p l a i n s

i t s e l f o r a r t i c u l a t e s a c o h e r e r a n t p o i n t o f v i e w .

(Continued on pages 45-46)

FILM REVIEWS

Produced by: Simon Channing Williams

Directed by and written by: Mike Leigh

Starring: ImeIda Staunton, Phil Davis, Peter Wight, Daniel Mays, Alex Kelly, Eddie Marsan, Heather Craney, Adrian Scarborough, Sally Hawkins, and Ruth Sheen.Color 125 mins

With Vera Drake, Mike Leigh has made a painful ly honest social t ragedy,

eschewing sat i re and styl izat ion for a straightfoward, restrained and utter ly t rue

evocat ion of working class characters and their mi l ieu. In the f i lm, Leigh focouses on

a warm, happy working-class Cockney family (far f rom the norm of his work) , l iv ing

in an austere, c lean f lat in the ear ly Fi f t ies Hor th London. The family ’s l i fe is turned

upside down when the mother and wife Vera is arrested.

The f i lm’s eponymous Vera ( Imelda Staunton in a revet ing per formance)

is a shor t , cheery, ordinary woman, who cleans the houses of upper-middle- and

upper-class famil ies-people who barely recognize her existence. She tends to her

bedridden,aged mother and an inval id neighbor with sol ic i tude and hot cups of tea.

And for tweenty years, she has gent ly “helped

out young gir ls in t rouble,” her euphemist ic way

of saying that she secret ly per forms i l legal

abor t ions ( abor t ion only becoming legal in

England and Wales in 1967).

Vera is a seeming innocent who

per forms abor t ions free of charge, seeing them

as acts of compassion. She is also not the sor t

of woman who would por vide a social or moral

just i f icat ion for her act ions--- i l legal acts that

are v iewed by much of the publ ic as murder.

But Vera, a woman seemingly without a dark

s ide, is just innately kind and car ing, and that is

the only explanat ion that the f i lm offers for her

behavior. Leigh never uses her pl ight to indulge

in a direct cr i t iqua of ant iabor t ion laws, but

rather conveys to us how few options women

of Vera’s class have when confronted with an

unwanted pregnancy.

-Leonard Quard

CHOICE

LIFE

VERADRAKE

43. VERA (IMEIDA STAUTON) IS ARRESTED FOR

PERFORMING ILLEGAL ABORTIONS IN MIKE LEIGH’S VERA DRAKE.

Produced by: Becky Glupczynski

Directed by and written by: Joshua Marston

Starring: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Guilied Lopez, Yenny Paola Vega, Patricia Rae, Osvaldo Plasencia, Orlando Tobon, and John Alex Toro.Color 125 mins.

mar

ia

fullof grace

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

Produced by: Tina Sinatra, Scott Rudin, Jonathan Demme, IIona Herzberg, and Scott Aversano

Directed by: Jonathan DemmeScreenplay by: Daniel Pyne and Dean Geogaris.

Starring: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Guilied Lopez, Yenny Paola Vega, Patricia Rae, Osvaldo Plasencia, Orlando Tobon, and John Alex Toro.Color 125 mins.

Joshua Marston’s f i rst feature fol lows Maria Alvarez (Catal ina Sandino

Moreno), a young, pregnant, recently dismissed factory worker in Columbia, as she

impulsively embraces the oppor tunity to become a New York-bound drug ‘mule. ’

Al though the f i lm presents a narrat ive of the drug trade from a female smuggler ’s point

of v iew, a perspect ive absent f rom mainstream poducts l ike Steven Soderbergh’s

Traff ic (2000), Maria Ful l of Grace is largely the story of an immigrant ’s pi lgr image.

The journey of seventeen-year-old Maria is real ly an escape from unemployment, an

exploitat ive family, and the prospect of a loveless marr iage.

-Vojislava Fil ipcevic

The f i rst Manchurian Candidate movie, as you’ l l

recal l , centered--along with many delectable s idebars--on

a convoluted communist plot , through brainwashing and

assassinat ion to take over the United States presidency.

Now comes, The Manchurian Candidate remake,

based, according to the credits, on George Axelrod’s 1962

screenplay and the or iginal novel by Richard Condon. In

a f l inch at the hear t of this remake, and i t carr ies over to

every aspect of the movie. Looking back at the 1962 f i lm

af ter seeing the new version, you real ize that i ts pulsat ing

narrat ive dr ive leaves unexplained a lot of extremely crucial

behavior. What compels Mrs. Isel in, Angela Lansbury’s

character, to betray her country and become l inchpin of a

communist coup. Overal l , the remake almost completely

lack s the verbal wit and visual comedy that played with and

against the terrors of the 1962 f i lm.

-Robert Sklar

MARIA (CATALINA SANDINO) WASHING DRUG FILLED CAPSULES IN JOSHUA MARTSTON’S MARIA FULL OF GRACE.

RAYMOND (LIEV SCHREIBER) ANSWERS A OMINIOUS PHONE CALL FROM A STRANGER IN JONATHAN DEMME’S MANCHURIAN CANIDATE

45.

anymore

ineed

didn’tthat one

“

”

anymore

ineed

didn’tthat one

“

”

Rabeya seems to be typical ly rebel l ious American teenager. Pakistanis and Indians use the term “ABCD”---meaning American Born Confused Desi---to dispar ingly refer to such types, with the word desi commonly meaning “ nat ive” or “one of us.” Rabeya and several of the other characters in the f i lm seem per fect i l lust ions of the ABCD concept. The novel on which the f i lm is based does provide more complexity than the f i lm on this and other issues, and i t is impossible to evaluate the f i lm without also discussing the book . The author Michael “Muhammed” Knight is a white American Musl im conver t f rom upstate New York . Knight had an inf ini tely t roubled chi ldhood that is of ten ci ted as the reason he came to Is lam at the age of s ixteen. At this t ime two events t ranspired simultaneously; he read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and then met his father for the f i rst t ime. His father was a raging white supremacist who disparged his son’s newly found bel iefs. At t ime, feel ing rebel l ious towards his abusive father, Knight saw Is lam “ as a correct ion of everything wrong in America,” and in his

own l i fe. In his zeal , he traveled to the Shah Faisal Mosque in Is lamabad, Pakistan, to learn more; he

also very near ly missed going off to Chechnya to f ight a holy war or j ihad.

Instead of going to war, Knight found himself increasingly disenchanted with the or thodoxies of the version of Is lam to which hew was exposed, and penned The Taqwacores in 2002 as a bi t ter farwel l to the rel igion. Knight ’s sensat ional and simple-minded approach reveals i tself even in the t i t le, which combines a reduct ive translat ion for the Arab word taqwa, meaning “piety,” and then adding “core” (shor t for hard-core). In Engl ish,

vaious translat ions that approach the Is lamic spir i t of taqwa are “pious God-fear ing,” “God fear ing piety,” “devout upr ightness,” and “holy fear.” The detour into the definit ion of Taqwa i l lustrates Knight’s one-dimensional understanding. His characters are f ighting too hard against things that don’t necessari ly exist except in one version of Islam. The plain fact is that hard-core Musl ims, nay hard-core zeolots of any kind, of any rel igion, are downright scary. Soprt ing a Mohawk does not make them cool. Punk was and always has been about dissing everything, and that includes God. Knight’s novel ult imately ser ves of Islam that give r ise to such a bigoted proposals as “Burn a Koran Day.” Offense aside, the Taqwacore story cannot make any sor t of meaningful statement about Is lam, or any organized rel igion, to anyone deeply engaged in fai th, largely because i t ’s appeal resides in i ts shock value. The baff l ing par t of a l l th is is that the imaginary world created by Knight actual ly inspired (or with i ts sheer brute force brainwashed) i ts unsuspect ing dupes to create a “real” scene. How far the honest-to-goodness Taqwacores can go to actual ly provoke thought and affect change remains debatable. The Taqwacores, however, is f inal ly not about Musl ims, and i t ’s not about South Asians, but i t is very much, and more impor tant ly, a fascinat ing case study of the great experiment that is America.

-Sascha Akhtar