Khuda Kay Liye(In The Name Of God)

http://www.inthenameofgod.com/

This writing is my letter of the film"Khuda Kay Liye" for its director, which I was asked to translate my Japanese impressions to give it to the director by my professor.





Khuda Kay Liye

I saw the film without any preliminary knowledge so I think I don’t understand enough backgrounds or relationship of characters in detail.
Anyway, I will write about my impression or feelings of this film.

Firstly, before I watched the film, I thought it was about conflicts between Hinduism and Islam because I heard a little about this film from the professor that the Pakistani film has been screened in India for the first time in several years. But it’s totally different.

When I saw the film and was considering about the theme, the Turkish and Germany film titled“Gegen die Wand”directed by Fatih Akin came to my mind. It depicts quite modernistic problem of Islamic immigrants in Turkey. And especially this film also takes marriage problem from the religious view as a concrete example of difficulty in modern society.

In the film of “Khuda Kay Liye”, the theme is also the conflict between religious practice and the modern society globalized and immigrated.
The outstanding point of this film is that in each places such as U.S, Pakistan and U.K, mainly each two couplings of Islam and non-Islam are connected to one family in Pakistan. This complicated involvement of each stories is quite interesting and novel. These problems actually have occurred in real world and there’re lots of things to think about such as the way one views Islam in this post-9.11 age.

Different from typical Indian movies, the story is consistently quite serious and pleasure-seeking and jolly Indian music or dance scenes are completely eliminated, I think thanks for the superior sense in music of the director who is also music creator, including Mekaal Husan Band and other prominent sound tracks of Pakistani modern music are along with the movie. This musical achievement also contributes to the high evaluation of this film. In my impression, these sound tracks are quite influenced from modern western music though they still take pride in their Islamic identity singing “Allah” sonorously.

One cornerstone of this film is that difficulty among Islamic immigrant families living in western countries, their religion and the environment around their society. Absolute religious customs in Islam and rationality organized by laws are never reconciled. Another one is that the opposition of Islamic fundamentalism and liberalism which grows more serious after 9.11 and U.S stance for Pakistan. As in the film, U.S unfairly arrest and persecute educated Islamic immigrants only because of their religious names. The point at issue is absolute lack of understanding for other religion of Islam. In this sense, this film casts these serious issues to the society and makes it clear the real circumstances. Also this was not made by US side, made by Pakistani side that depicts post-9.11 society and the problem so I can possibly say that this film has quite important role.

I hope this film is screened all over the world not only in Japan but also western countries and lots of people come and watch it.



Thank you for reading my writing, I’m really glad to see this film and let you know about my impression. Lots of appreciations.


Sincerely,