Hamid movie review: Rasika Dugal is bright in this heart-wrenching and uplifting film

throw: Rasika Dugal, Talha Arshad Reshi and Vikas Kumar

Director: Aijaz Khan

Evaluation4 stars out of 5

The innocence of childhood and the healing power of faith – one springing from the other – are put to the test in the context of the conflict in Kashmir in Hamid, a silent and moving story of loss and nostalgia in a country invaded by violence. The third release of director Aijaz Khan describes the unrest in the valley through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy, Hamid, who, in all his innocence, believes in miracles and resurrections.

Talha Arshad Reshi, a wide-eyed and endearing child actor, whom the filmmaker developed a few days before the filming, bathes the film in a warm glow that often serves to dispel the dark and depressing realities told by the narrative. Hamid belongs equally to the luminous Rasika Dugal, who pierces our souls with a flawless and controlled intensity.

In one scene, the boy's father, a boat builder and a poet, Rehmat, tells little Hamid that death is followed by a burial. Why then, the boy asks. For the deceased to be forgotten, Rehmat answers. But is oblivion even an option when people disappear without permission? Hamid asks his classmate Bilaal when the latter, citing his grandmother, says that those whom Allah loves the most leave the world early.

In another scene, which raises a much more temporal and complex problem, two paramilitaries pee on a wall on which is written "Azaadi". A boy barely out of adolescence peels a stone at one of them. The livid soldier pushes the young attacker to the ground and points his gun at him. His colleague prevents him from pulling the trigger. Death is always a bullet or an explosion in this rugged landscape.

Hamid is punctuated by many troubling footage highlighting the situation in Kashmir, but when the cherub Hamid is on the screen looking at the world in its own way, the whole appears, feels and sounds infinitely better. As the film unfolds, the boy becomes an emblem of the kind of unblemished purity that can generate and maintain hope between fear and death.

Hamid is strewn with images we have seen before in fiction films about Kashmir – patrolling soldiers, stalking raiders, azaadi and separatists working in the shadows to indoctrinate dead children who have zero where to go. But do not expect drama dramas, acute rhetoric or visceral action from this sober and refreshing film that seeks sources of light in dense darkness.

Hamid is a narrative of fable and disarming simplicity that describes the impact of prolonged and insoluble political turmoil on ordinary fighters and people caught in the crossfire. True, the movie hardly dives into the quivering cauldron that is Kashmir, but it's all it needs to convey the poignant character of the story.

The tonal regularity adopted by the director is in perfect harmony with the discreet narrative of a boy who asks God's intervention when his father disappears. Hamid is a deeply melancholy film that is both melancholy and warm, heartbreaking and inspiring. It's a strong advocate for mental health in a situation where humanity is the most bruised.

Adapted by Ravinder Randhawa from Phone No 786, a play by Kashmiri writer Mohammad Amin Bhat, the film explores the magic residues and regenerative possibilities that lie beneath the thick layers of rancor and mistrust that have enveloped the world. valley.

One of the main narrative currents of Hamid is "incarnated" by the absent boat builder, which we only see in a handful of early scenes. He disappears, leaving behind his tools, a cell phone and a frayed newspaper of thoughtful poems about the pain of living in the shadow of the gun. His puzzled son has no idea where his father left and some pines meet with him. The boy clings to hope when all his entourage has sunk into despair.

Hamid (Reshi) composed the 786 which, it is said, is the number of God. The boy believes that his father was summoned by the Almighty to build a boat and that he will be back once the job is done. Her mother, Ishrat (Dugal), completely numb with the grief of her husband's unexplained disappearance, has not only no reason to share her optimism, but has also developed a certain coldness towards her only son.

Hamid's phone call reaches a CRPF attorney, Abhay (Vikas Kumar), a hot-headed man who has not been home for more than a year and a half and who wants to hold his eight-month-old daughter in his arms. Although initially inclined to consider this as a joke, the soldier plays the game, claiming to be the benevolent voice of Allah, thus reinforcing the boy's faith in his destiny.

The first time Hamid has a long conversation with the soldier, the latter catches a terrible cold. He's coughing. Hamid asks: Do not you have warm clothes? No, Abhay jokes. "Main kuch karta hoon (I'm going to do something," said the boy and hung up.) He picked up an old shawl from his father and left it at the local mosque.It ends up holding a beggar.Hamid is understandable bewildered, but he is too anxious to ensure the return of his father to deal excessively with these small reverses.

Dugal absolutely embodies the role of the half-widow of Kashmir who has almost lost her will to live. It understands everything – the deliberate step, the diction, the modulation of the voice and the behavior that suggests an overwhelming lassitude towards the world – altogether. Vikas Kumar is wonderful as an anguished soldier whose life is forever changed by Hamid's childish supplications. The young Reshi is a package of natural charm.

It is in Hamid's unwavering belief that Allah will fulfill his wish, no matter what gives the film its quality of well-being, even when its consideration of all that is wrong in the Valley is accurate and clinical. Paradise may have been lost due to endless conflict, but it could still be regained. Hamid, the film and the character, articulate this global hope with soft but precise and persuasive traits.