Khuda kay liye

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

Also known as “in the name of God”.
My first Pakistani movie (yes, I, my self, also amazed by this fact ;p)

Khuda Kay Liye (Urdu: خدا کے لیے, Hindi: ख़ुदा के लिए, translation: For God; also known in English as In the Name of God) is a Pakistani Urdu/Hindi-language movie directed by Shoaib Mansoor. The movie won many awards, including the Award for Best Picture at 31st Cairo International Film Festival, and became the highest grossing movie of Pakistan of all time (wow! I didn’t know this movie was this good ;p)

I’m interested with the movie because of the title which is very familiar for me.
I think I must have heard about it somewhere.
And I haven’t finish watching it, because it takes 142 minutes of duration to finish it while it’s already late, and most of all, I saw this scene that I don’t like – connected with the 9-11 tragedy and the reaction of US citizen (well, I always blamed US -yes, i mean United State, not us ;p- movie makers if they discredited Islam, and what I saw is that they, the Pakistani movie makers who made this movie, are discrediting US citizen. You’ll be able to find it exactly at minute 100).
So, I can only tell you about the first 100 minutes I’ve watched, and i give three stars for the first 100 minutes (it was four stars at the beginning, but it loose one star when it started to show the aforementioned things ;p)

The plot it’s a little bit wide.
Combining all kind of stories.
Maybe, if I’m not mistaken, the main idea is to shows the differences between the modern muslims and the fundamentalists and strict muslims.
Well, maybe not exactly showing the differences. It shows some stories about modern muslim families, and at the same time also showing what happen in fundamentalists community.

And there is also a cute and modern muslim guy (cast by Fawad Afzal Khan), really, and i mean really, cute hahaha.
This guy, named Sarmad, is transforming into a fundamentalist.
Maybe he’s on his way in search to be a better muslim.
I can’t say that what they did is wrong (the fundamentalists), well, they do have their own believes, but in some parts I don’t agree with them.
Same case for the modern muslims that illustrated by the movie director. I also don’t agree with them in some parts.

Maybe I’m stuck in the middle in this case.
I’m not that strict, and I’m also not that modern and open minded one.
Well, my father always says that Islam is not supposed to be a burden for you, not to make your life harder or give you difficulties in living your life.
But at the same time, we do have our limit and rules in doing things.
And again, I have my opinion and you can have yours :D

Well, I think the first 100 minutes is quite good.
The story is good, and provide some details. It gives me better illustration of their living condition. Make me able to imagine how it feels like to be a Pakistani (don't get me wrong on this)
It even put some sparks of comedy which makes me laugh out loud.
The picture is taken with good techniques, but what I don’t understand is the quality of the picture it self. It’s not sharp enough, kinda oldies. My first impression is that this movie is reminding me of 98’s Indonesian movies. And when I’m questioning this I found out that this movie was released on July 2007. Quite new, isn’t it?
Is it only this movie, or all Pakistani movies have pictures like this.
I’m not sure about this.

I know, I know, this review might not giving much information about this movie, therefore i provide you with a review I took from imdb :)

“This film is about the difficult situation in which Pakistanis in particular and the Muslims in general are caught up since 9/11. There is a war going on between the Fundamentalists and the Liberal Muslims. This situation is creating a drift not only between the western world and the Muslims but also within the Muslim community. The educated and modern Muslims are in a difficult situation because of their approach towards life and their western attire. They are criticized and harassed by the fundamentalists on the other hand the western world sees them as potential suspects of terrorism just because of their Muslim names.
This paradox is resulting in great suffering for a forward looking Muslim. This is the theme of the film 'Khuda Kay Liye' which in English means "for god's sake!". Since it is meant for the South Asian market, the title was misinterpreted from its original name which was written in the Urdu script.
The interesting thing about this film is how it connects the happenings in three continents, unlike the usual Indian and Pakistani films based on romantic sagas, dances and songs, this film is based on some very serious issues, raising controversial questions engaging Muslim minds these days.”

Feel free to search for some sites from where you can download this movie (i believe you won't able to find it in any dvd store in Indonesia, or even the pirated version of it in glodok, mol ambasador and also not in sarkem and vertex ;p)
and the most important thing is don’t forget the subtitle (even though they have some scenes in English but most of it is in Urdu).
Tips: try to search for Khuda ke liye instead of Khuda kay liye for english subtitle :)

Try to watch it guys, maybe I’ll try to finish it tomorrow, hmm, I mean today :D