Khuda Key Liey by Shoaib Mansoor

KKL! Finally in the UK. Eagerly awaited since its launch on the 20th of July in Pakistan. Like every one else I had read, heard and seen a lot about it even before its launching ceremony that took place in Karachi. We drove almost 70 miles to go to Manchester to watch the show which was a sell out and I had to make the booking in advance. A rare scenario for a Pakistani film! As the movie was not released in my city, Nottingham, we did not have any other option. Another problem that we faced was the fact that ‘Odeon’ , the cinema where the movie was being shown only had one show in a day which was at 9PM. That meant that we had to stay in Manchester overnight and that’s exactly what we did. That became a blessing in disguise as the next day it was a good weather which is a priceless commodity in Britain. Hence we managed to hit two birds with one stone and had a memorable time of our lives by visiting the county of Cumbria which is commonly known as the Lake District. I will have to write about the breath taking views of that county on another occasion as for the time being I am going to write about my experience of KKL.
The movie had a nice feel about it from the start. It addresses three to four different issues that today’s Muslim society faces. Interestingly all the topics were quite sensitive and required the need to be careful while discussing them. However a seasoned director like Shoaib Mansoor managed to do justice with all of them. Just like a beautiful painting where not only the colour combination but when and where to use how much amount is crucial, he successfully completes the painting on a canvas. Detail to attention is a hallmark of Shoaib Mansoor’s creative work. One thing I have always liked about his work is that his work always has an air of originality and innovation in it. Be it ‘Unkahi’, ‘Fifty fifty’ or ‘Alpha Bravo Charlie', his work has always had an effect of that of the first drop of rain and becomes the trend setter in a country which has a tradition of people becoming trend followers. All of his work has a strong character and gives an impression that a lot of passion and artistic sense has been added to it. The self styled POP culture of Pakistan which saw an immense growth after the success of ‘Dil Dil Pakistan’ is a credit which I solely give to Shaoib Mansoor. No matter what writers like Nadeem Farroq Paracha say about the commercial pop culture of Pakistan I think it has come a long way and has the trade mark of ‘Made in Pakistan’ on it.
KKL is a story of two brothers who were a part of an upper medium class society of Pakistan and were quite successful musicians. The younger brother was not as strong in his personality and allowed certain ‘Maulvis’ to brainwash his mind and take him towards the so called ‘jihadi’ groups. I do not need to go too much into the detail of the story itself as I would recommend you watching it yourself. However it manages to address the root causes of the unrest in the modern world with regards to the issues of ‘extremism’. The movie blames the one sided approach of the Americans towards the hatred in the Muslim world and also the lack of knowledge of the ’Maulvis’ towards understanding Islam. The music is quite impressive , though I believe that certain emotional situations could have been exploited with a little bit of more passion to capture the viewer’s heart and soul.

Overall eight out of ten for this debut film by Shaoib Mansoor. I think this is just the start. We are all waiting for ‘Saqib Malik’s’ movie now and hope Pakistani film industry will be revived to some extent after these efforts.