Adil Najam
The greatly trumpeted, fairly controversial, and mostly disappointing movie Jinnah was released in 1998 to even lesser acclaim than it deserved.
Despite all its flaws–especially its overly convoluted and philosophical plot which contributed much to its failure to excite ordinary non-Pakistani film-goers–it was thought-provoking rendition for Pakistanis: for those who liked the movie, and even more for those who did not.
It is sad that it ended up being seen by very few Pakistanis. The movie’s distribution was extremely sloppy, mostly due to the bickering between the principals of ‘The Quaid Project’. It played in Pakistan (in Urdu and in English) but very briefly and in very few theaters, and was never picked up for serious distribution abroad. Many who wanted to see the movie could not, simply because there was no place to see it at.
That has–belatedly–changed. Someone (it says Jamil Dehlavi) has recently placed the entire movie on video.google where it can be viewed if you have a reasonably fast Internet connection.
You can view it here by clicking on the image below, or go to video.google. The movie is just under 2 hours long, and in two parts.
For Part 2, click for rest of this entry.
I watched this movie at the Mill Valley film festival (CA) back when it was released. I remember Jamil Dehlavi was there to open it and take questions from the audience afterwards. I also remember local journalists asking questions about the Quaid and a Pakistani gentleman arguing with Jamil Dehlavi that he had watched a censored version of the movie in Governor House, Sind at which Mr Dehlavi said, “I made the movie and I assure you there are no two versions of this movie”. At this one would expect the discussion to stop but the gentleman kept insisting. The other interesting thing I remember is that the Pakistani audience showed utter disregard for the rest of the audience by being noisy, late, standing up and blocking others view and showing up dressed like it was eid. I have nothing against that, it could be taken as a sign of respect for our beloved Quaid but the problem is I was sitting in an aisle seat and everytime a lady with gota laden ( I know ladies will tell me no one wears gota today :) ) heavy duty dupatta on would pass by (and there were many of those), it would scratch my face because these fancy dupattas are not meant to be left flowing in narrow aisles of a rickety theater. Bottom line is, it was a disgrace in front of foreign press some of whom turned around and told people to keep it low at times. We Pakistanis are definitely not image conscious.
On to the movie…it was nothing like Gandhi, actually quite comical. Its a shame that even after 60 years (less when the movie was released) of singing songs and claiming to be more patriotic than any other race on the planet we couldnt come up with a decent movie about the man who gave us an identity and a chance to be a nation. That also explains the botched up distribution of this movie.
I feel the movie can still be edited to remove all the comical scenes with Shashi Kapoor and the trial in the end, made better and re-released. From a Pakistani perspective the Quaids name evokes emotion which alone can make this movie a blockbuster in the Pakistani market if redux’d.
The pTv drama JINNAH SE QUAID was infinite time better and clsoed to reality than the mentioned movie.
p.s: an intresting YT video about Jinnah’s radio address
Cool.
Thanks for the link. Personally, I really like the movie especially the fact that it emphasised on Jinnah as a person rather than mainly focusing on his political life.
great find.. thanks for posting it here