Joyland (Movie)

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    ‘Joyland’ Review: A Target of Gossip

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    Saim Sadiq’s melodrama, about a husband’s affair with a transgender dancer, was briefly banned in Pakistan.In November, the director Saim Sadiq’s provocative melodrama “Joyland” was briefly banned in his home country, Pakistan, for depicting a romance between a married man, Haider, and a dancer, Biba. Western audiences might refer to Biba as a transgender woman, but the film avoids those words. “She is that,” Haider tells his jilted wife.A more common local term is khawaja sira, a gender identity that dates to the 16th century and connotes neither male nor female. This community, whose members often served as advisers in the Mughal Empire, was criminalized under British colonial rule. Long shunned, they scored an important victory in 2018 when Pakistan passed anti-discrimination laws that define gender identity as a “a person’s innermost and individual sense of self as male, female or a blend of both, or neither.”Nevertheless, “Joyland” spurred an outcry in Pakistan, with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting deeming the Cannes prize winner “highly objectionable.” The activist and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, one of the film producers, defended it in Variety. The ban was rescinded after three days, then later reinstated in one province.Outrage works in the movie’s favor; this polite weepie needs the added spice. While about an unconventional affair, the movie is more interested in suppression and restraint. Sadiq, a sensitive director who occasionally muddles a scene when he gets bashful, focuses on the patriarchy’s impact on men. Here, every man we meet is terrified to become the target of gossip — a paranoia that sometimes seems to be only in their heads.“Joyland” takes its title from a theme park in Lahore. The city’s stone walls barely allow the park’s neon lights to peek out — Sadiq’s subtle metaphor for how society constrains the colorful shades of human desire. Two brothers live ‌in a crowded, dimly lit house they share with their father (Salmaan Peerzada), a white-haired bully who believes that men should work and women should bear children. This is fine with the macho eldest son, Saleem (Sohail Sameer), and tolerable to his wife, Nucchi (Sarwat Gilani). But our attention is pulled to the younger, gentler son, Haider (Ali Junejo), and his happily employed wife, Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq, a quiet powerhouse). When Haider acquiesces to his dad’s expectations — he finds a job, and his wife is forced out of hers — the entire home’s stability comes tumbling down.Haider’s new (secret) job is as a backup dancer to Biba, a ferocious presence played by Alina Khan. Haider is a klutz — “by the grace of Allah, you’re really terrible,” a director groans — and the theater’s finances make zero sense. (How can Biba pay six dancers while scrounging for stage time?) Yet, the script, by Sadiq and Maggie Briggs, doesn’t spend enough time backstage to satisfy our curiosity. With Joe Saade’s swirling camerawork, the film’s burlesque scenes are themselves a tease, making us yearn for one more sweaty dance number or another “All About Eve”-esque zinger that Biba delivers to her rival (Priya Usman Khan).We’re meant to be miserable when the movie slinks back to the grim family manor. As those inside increasingly realize that they, too, want to make their own choices, our loyalty turns away from Haider to the women, particularly the daughters-in-law, who are more articulate about and exhausted by the pressures on their behavior. When Farooq and Gilani each get a scene to speak up about their characters’ frustrations, their righteous anger burns a hole through the screen.JoylandNot rated. In Punjabi and Urdu, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Joyland,’ an L.G.B.T. Pakistani Film, Is Celebrated Abroad

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      Saim Sadiq’s feature “Joyland,” which includes a transgender woman’s love affair, cannot be shown in Pakistan’s Punjab Province.Over the past year, the writer-director Saim Sadiq has garnered a series of unprecedented accolades for Pakistani cinema.Last May, his debut film, “Joyland,” out Friday, became the first production from Pakistan to compete in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the jury prize in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. It was also the first entry from the country to be shortlisted for the best international feature film Oscar. And just last month, it emerged as the first Pakistani title to win at the Film Independent Spirit Awards in the same category.The project also counts among its executive producers the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai, the Oscar-winning British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed and the Iranian American director Ramin Bahrani.But despite this international recognition and notable support, “Joyland,” which features characters defying traditional binary gender norms, remains banned in Sadiq’s hometown of Lahore, and in the entire Punjab Province, which houses the majority of Pakistan’s cinemas and about half of the Islamic nation’s entire population.“I wanted the film to play in Pakistani theaters more than anything else,” said an impassioned Sadiq, 32, during a recent interview at the Los Angeles home of the movie’s Indian-born producer, Apoorva Charan.Sadiq and Charan met while both were studying at Columbia University. It was during their time there that Sadiq began writing “Joyland,” a coming-of-age story told as an intricate ensemble piece, as a screenwriting class assignment.When Haider starts working as a backup dancer, he must keep his new source of income, and outlet for self-expression, a secret.Oscilloscope LaboratoriesWhen Haider (Ali Junejo), a mild-mannered young man in an arranged marriage, lands a job as a backup dancer for Biba (Alina Khan), a strong-willed transgender performer, his wife, Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq), quits her job against her will to help out with the domestic tasks Haider was doing before, including caring for his brother’s children.But Haider must keep his new source of income, and outlet for self-expression, a secret, as the couple live in an extended family household under the rule of Haider’s traditional elderly father. That Haider explores his sexuality with Biba further complicates his situation.To challenge the Hollywood notion of the sole protagonist, Sadiq said he wanted to understand “the collective human experience. It was very important to make this a very collectivist film, a film which was truly an ensemble film where the effect of one person’s actions on other people were also taken into account from their perspective.”That “Joyland,” among its many themes, includes a burgeoning romance between a trans woman and a straight-identifying man caused public outcry from Pakistan’s conservative factions on social media just a few days before the film’s scheduled November local release date.The seismic controversy led to the film’s ban, even after Sadiq had diligently obtained the required permits from each of the three separate censor boards in the country: those pertinent to the provinces of Punjab and Sindh, plus the federal board that covers the rest of the territory.In order to appease them, Sadiq had already compromised the artistic integrity of his work.Clockwise from upper left, Farooq, Junejo, Sadiq and Khan in Los Angeles in March.Elizabeth WeinbergFirst, the director was asked to remove two intimate scenes that the censors unsurprisingly deemed too risqué. Sadiq had anticipated these moments would not meet their parameters, so he had shot alternate versions so that the narrative could still run coherently in the eventual Pakistani version. However, more changes were demanded.“What I wasn’t prepared for was a bunch of laughably random cuts and dialogue omissions that were asked for by the federal and Punjab censor boards, which included blurring the shot of a platonic hug between a husband and wife on a rooftop,” Sadiq said.Censorship is unfortunately a cornerstone of Pakistan’s relationship with cinema, said Ali Khan, co-author of the book “Cinema and Society: Film and Social Change in Pakistan,” in a recent video interview.In 1954, “Roohi,” directed by W.Z. Ahmed, became the first film banned in an independent Pakistan for its perceived socialist agenda. Since then, and across the multiple political transitions the nation has undergone, creative freedom has often been hindered. Only about a dozen feature films, mostly commercial fare, are produced in Pakistan each year.“There are so many stories to tell from Pakistan, but how do you do that if everything is controversial?” Ali Kahn said. “It’s really unfortunate that we are not able to support our own films because of this paranoia over how the country is being depicted.”While some Pakistani productions may have had instances of subtle, implied queerness in the past, Sadiq believes there hadn’t been a film that overtly engaged with gender and sexual diversity in Pakistan before “Joyland.”Fortunately, the international attention “Joyland” had already received abroad, as well as a flood of vocal tweets from the filmmaker and his allies denouncing the decision, exerted enough pressure that the edited iteration was allowed to be screened in the Sindh province and the territory under the federal censor board (which includes the capital city of Islamabad).But the authorities in Punjab opted to uphold the ban.Junejo and Khan in a scene from the film. The plotline around their characters’ love affair caused public outcry from Pakistan’s conservative factions on social media.Oscilloscope LaboratoriesFor Khan, a dancer turned actress who first collaborated with Sadiq on the short film “Darling,” the news that her work wouldn’t be seen in Lahore was devastating.“I needed the film to play in my city so that the people who have wronged me there for being trans could see me in a more human light,” she said, speaking in Urdu with Sadiq acting as her interpreter. “And I wanted to show my community that it is possible for a trans person to make something out of their life.”Although Pakistan passed a bill protecting the rights of transgender citizens in 2018, violence, including murder, against trans people in the country remains an alarming issue. Since the law came into existence, homicides of transgender people have increased, with 14 people killed last year, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring project.The rest of Sadiq’s cast were also aware of the significance of the story they were sharing. Junejo, for example, came on board after other actors rejected the part because of its subject matter. Even the sensitive way Haider uses his body when dancing is cause for concern in an environment where masculinity is harshly policed.“It was important that we were making it in Pakistan because its patriarchal society demands certain roles from every one of its members, men included,” Junejo said.In turn, Farooq believes that one of the most remarkable outcomes of the film’s toilsome journey in Pakistan are the conversations that both detractors as well as defenders are having about the purpose of art in general and of filmmaking in particular.“Pakistani viewers who had for long been turned into passive consumers of TV or film were all of a sudden actively talking about the role of art in their lives,” Farooq said. “It’s not the job of films to placate you. Films can talk about things that are uncomfortable.”Months after the film’s partial theatrical release, heated online discussions over “Joyland” continue, especially when anyone of note in Pakistan publicly comments on it.For his part, Sadiq holds on to the film’s hard-fought victories in the face of the restrictions.Embattled as his work might be in the place of his birth, the director finds invigorating encouragement in learning that other people, in Pakistan and elsewhere, have embraced it.“Once the film was finished, I understood I had initially done it out of selfish reasons,” he said. “But now it means something to others, and it means something to the world even if in a small way, so I need to do right by it and push for it to be seen.” More