Yasmin (2004) Reviews

• A good, if condensed and extreme summary of the Muslim experience since 11/9/01 with a good title performance

  bob the moo2005-01-20

  Yasmin Husseini lives with her father, brother, uncle and her "husband" – her marriage to immigrant Faysal being an arrangement between families as opposed to a relationship. Divorce is on the cards as she is very together and British-born while his poor English and "uncivilised" ways grate on her. Living a traditional Muslim life at home for her father but living like a "Westerner" at work, Yasmin is forced to take sides when a news flash comes onto the TV on the afternoon of September 11th 2001. Treated differently by everyone, Yasmin tries to get on the best she can but soon learns about the true nature of new UK terror laws when it turns out that Faysal who has a brother back home who teaches at a school funded by the KLF. Described by another reviewer on this site in his name-dropping but useful review on this site as a "light-hearted comedy", this film was clearly not marketed well if that's what people thought it was going to be – rather it is a solid drama that looks at the impact of 11/9/01 on the British Muslim community – many of the younger generation, like Yasmin, have much more in community with western values than with those preached by Bin Laden. On the face of it the film could have been a very PC affair with a load of pandering; however, aside from loads of "white authority" stereotypes the film is pretty balanced and interesting look at the plight of Yasmin. The story is interesting enough and lots of issues are touched on – interracial relationships, fear, old world versus western values, disaffected youth and so on; mostly it all works although the nature of the beast means that Yasmin's situation is quite extreme because so many situations are rolled into the experience of the Husseini family. The cast is pretty good though and it is mainly their work that keeps it worked and stops their characters just being big clichés. Panjabi is a good actress and her Yasmin is well crafted with conflicting loyalties and desires, making her an interesting character and a good performance. Ahmed's Nas is a good performance, very natural, and it is not his fault that he has to carry the extreme experience of disaffected youth being drawn into terrorism. Jackson is lumbered with a poor character – merely a combination of all the mistrust that we are being old that "all white people" have towards Islam; he tries his best and is natural at the start but once 9/11 occur he is clumsy and poorly written when viewed next to Yasmin. Overall this is a good film that does a good job of summarising the Muslim experience since they became public enemy #1. Being Northern Irish, I know how it feels (and also know how it feels to suffer under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, as was) and I am not too sympathetic with Muslims groups who play the race card in every discussion on this subject, so I liked that the film didn't do that. The title role is well performed and the film does a good job of pulling a lot together without making it one big clichéd PC mess.

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• Good work!

  ahrais2005-01-13

  This is the first time I have seen and heard about this film on channel 4. I must admit speaking as an Iraqi Muslim myself, I liked this film. I was so surprised when I found out that the main writers and directors of the film were not Asian or Muslim. Usually whenever non-Muslims analyse and study Islam and Muslims they don't completely understand the true Islam as we see it, but this time I was quite surprised. I think the good points of the film is that it is quite a balanced portrayal of the lives of Muslims living in British society. This film captures the dilemmas that second generation Muslims face trying to uphold their religion and values whilst also attempting to integrate into society. It is good in that it shows the positive and the negative of both sides, the Muslim and the English. This is quite realistic. It also distinguishes the different types of Muslims such as the more extremist ones who are less tolerant and interpret Islam inaccurately and the more moderate ones who carry the true Muslim message, such as Yasmin's father who believes in peace and harmony. However this film still does not go far enough in challenging negative stereotypes about Islam and Muslims. Whilst it is true that there are British Muslims who do reject their religion and culture, just like among other religious groups, there are also a huge number of British Muslims who manage to successfully fulfill their religious and cultural demands whilst also integrating well into the wider society. For example I know many very successful and religious Pakistani and Iraqi people living in Britain who sympathise with Muslim countries but also oppose violence, extremism and terrorism. I found the acting, directing and production was done very well. Although I found the ending too abrupt, there was no real resolution or conclusion to the film. Overall I found it was quite an accurate representation that showed the grey areas rather than simplistic representations usually associated with Islam, but still didn't go far enough in challenging some negative attitudes. However still better than the awful representation of Muslims in 'East is East'.

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• yasmin

  waheed2005-01-15

  Yasmin is about the effects of a British Muslim before and after the 9/11 period. It stars Archie panjabi who stars as Yasmin, a Muslim woman to find herself. she leads a double life at home she act as a traditional Muslim girl and at work she tries to blend in with work colleges. She also has an arrange marriage with a cousin so he can visa in the country. The first half is quite light hearted drama, but the tone of film starts to change after the 9/11 twin towers attack. She finds herself getting racial abuse from work mates, abuse from public and then her husband is falsely accused of being a terrorist. When she visit her husband to get a divorce she also finds herself being accused of having terrorist connections. From this point she starts to re-evaluate her life and her Muslim beliefs. As being a Muslim myself i found this to be the first drama that actually gave an accurate portrayal of what Brit-Muslim went though and how they felt. Archie panjabi fantastic performance and a realistic portrayal of a Muslim. I would recommend seeing this if you want to see how Muslims really felt.I have recently seen a lot of dramas about Muslim during the 9/11 period and have not been happy with how Muslims are constantly being made out to be terrorist,so i was surprised to see a realistic drama that showed Muslim in a good light. Also this drama is based on true facts as the film makers did research in the Muslim community and asked Muslims about how they were treated during that time. Over all i thought this was a good and realist drama and world recommend it to anyone who wants to see a realistic portrayal of British Muslims.

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• A reasonable story, a difficult topic

  altavox2005-01-13

  It is a "story" built on top of a "topic". The story is about the consequences of the September 11 attacks on the daily life of a young British Muslim woman. The topic is Islam's shift towards conservatism (and fundamentalism) that many people blame on The West's "fight against terrorism". As such the story is necessarily incomplete, stereotypical, and unreal. But, as such, it does a pretty good job of making me think of what could be real --- the fear, the hate, the horror of law abuse, the consequences. The movie is also well balanced: smiles and tears are spared wisely. I just did not like the end.

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• Bend it like Blunkett

  Chris_Docker2004-08-23

  The above title was suggested as a suitable alternative name for the film by one of the crew who was I was chatting to after its screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. David Blunkett's attempts to flout or re-write the law have produced widespread condemnation from civil liberties groups and lawyers - but one of the minority groups most affected is British Muslims. In this warm, light-hearted comedy, set in a British Muslim community immediately around and immediately after 9/11, we see the horror of what members of that community were faced with as a result of the social, institutional and (shamefully) police and legal disregard for their civil liberties. In explaining the extensive research behind the film, Director Kenneth Glenaan says the examples used (innocent families being awoken by police 'terror' squads, thrusting guns in their faces, detaining them indefinitely etc) were typical of many actual cases, as were the scenes of discrimination and abuse in the workplace and in the street. In our story, a modern, working Pakistani woman, Yasmin, has a traditional (if lay-about) husband who is falsely imprisoned as a terrorist suspect. It turns out that the rather simple chap, isolated by his poor English, had been making long phone calls to his brother back home – who it so happens was a teacher at a school that had received funds from the Kashmir Liberation Front (which has connections with terrorism). Yasmin was about to divorce him, but the disingenuousness of the authorities eventually leads her to take his side as she realises injustices are being perpetrated against him. Other members of the family cover a range of attitudes, from the newly-recruited activist son distributing flyers (when not selling hash or working at the local mosque), the father who keeps trying to introduce a note of common sense, to the youths who find their new-found I(if fictitious) aura of ‘potentially dangerous freedom fighters' helps them attract local white girls. We see the way a decent white person woos a Pakistani who is not a practicing Muslim, how she has adapted to western values, yet we also see the bigoted look of shock on his face when she suggests he accompany her to the mosque one day. We see police tactics from the point of view of Muslims who have nothing to hide, the repugnance of those police tactics, yet when we examine them honestly we realise they are quite what we might expect – and we wouldn't have found them repugnant unless we saw them from the receiving end. But Yasmin is not a diatribe or an ode to the miseries of a disenfranchised group. It is a film about the many positive experiences that everyone can relate to within a small British Muslim community. It takes away much of the mystique and makes everyday Islam a little less arcane to the western newcomer. It uncovers more similarities than differences. It is a film that crosses borders, that lets us enter other peoples' hearts (in a similar way that a Full Monty, by the same writer, did), but it also leaves us with very serious questions to consider. A few of things I pondered during this film: In Britain, most white people cannot distinguish (by looking) between a Pakistani, an Iraqi, a Palestinian, a Syrian, etc. Neither can we distinguish the accents (a point also made by Control Room filmmaker Jehane Noujaim - the 'Iraqis' toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein did not appear to be Iraqis). When we hold our western democracy up as an example for other countries to emulate, it is shameful that our government should be guilty of implementing such unworthy measures as those experienced by British Muslims. The attitude of the British government has pushed Muslims together, of whatever background: if faced with a choice of two evils, people are more likely to be understanding of family and those of the same or similar culture. The attitude of our government in clamping down unjustly and indiscriminately on Brtitish Muslims in itself helps to foster terrorism, and gives terrorist recruiters more ammunition (just as Bush's actions in Iraq, in immediate practical terms, increased the threat of terrorism). Not all people in a Muslim community are Muslims! Some haven't been to a mosque for years. The lies told to the British public over Iraq cause untold suffering to innocent British Muslims. Not only indirectly through prejudices introduced through the system, but they are blamed in a totalitarian way simply because they are Muslim. The real culprits, those with massive oil interests (primarily Osama bin Laden and co and George Bush & co), and those that fund and keep terrorism covert (primarily Saudi Arabia and the CIA) are given a light dusting by the public and the authorities - largely because they are untouchable (and Saudi Arabia's foreign investments are so vast that upsetting them will upset the Western economy). In the Muslim / Arab's mind, all the Middle East conflicts centre around Palestine. This has been said again and again but is ignored by Westerners. Right Wing USA has no real intention of 'solving' the Israeli/Palestinian conflict except as part of U.S. expansionism, as outlined by the NeoConservatives' blueprints that guide U.S. foreign policy. Anyone wanting a fuller understanding of the East-West Islam-Christianity relations and conflicts need only study and comprehend the Israel-Palestine situation. Yasmin uses a number of stereotypes, all pushed together into one family. This is its strength and its weakness - to break new ground, especially using the medium of light comedy (which reaches people persuasively without polemic), stereotypes help to focus public awareness. The weakness is that many Muslims may feel patronised by the simplisticness. Many stereotypes are also not covered - the well-educated, middle class British Muslim, for instance. But some of these themes are outwith the scope of the film. Reactions to the movie at the Edinburgh International Film Festival screenings, both ecstatic and critical, show there is still much to be done. But this film opens at least a window of understanding for the white, non-Muslim community on the subject of oppression of British Muslims since 9/11 - a very small window perhaps, but perhaps the first one. At the time of writing, the film has distribution rights secured all over Europe - except, of course, the island where Mr Blunkett happens to live.

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