Akbar S. Ahmads project to make a film on the founder of the Pakistan state was the subject of a fierce and protracted controversy last year. Now that the film, Jinnah, is nearly complete, it has been shown to prospective buyers and others, whose help may be needed to meet the finishing costs. But what the producers have to show at the moment raises even more difficult questions than what they have so far faced – primarily to do with the script and the casting of Christopher "Dracula" Lee in the title role.
Some other major deficiencies apart, the main problem with the film appears to be in the flawed approach to the subject. It deals neither with the life of the Quaid nor with his work; both are touched upon only episodically in the course of defend ing the Quaids character and politics. This framework reduces the narrative to a string of anecdotes and brief pronouncements, damaging both the films unity and movement.
But first a few welcome surprises. In view of the myths created about Jinnah and the Pakistan movement by latter-day inventors of the Pakistan ideology, many people were genuinely concerned that due respect might not be paid in the film to the Quaids liberal, democratic creed or to his secular credentials. Such distortion has been avoided. Jinnahs impatience with conservative clerics has not been glossed over.
The film also avoids the language commonly used in Pakistan for Indias Congress leaders who opposed the idea of a separate Muslim nation. Here, they are not overly ridiculed. Nehrus amorous encounters with Lady Mountbatten have certainly been given more footage than the films theme warranted, but otherwise the Congress leaders are real persons and not caricatures. Both Gandhi and Nehru are allowed their arguments, and Jinnah is asked to seriously counter them.