The progress of Bangladeshi cinema during the last few years is rather evident even if sporadic. Although the presence of Mostofa Sarwar Farooki remains the most dominant one, Maksud Hossain, in his feature debut, comes to add his name in a list including Rubaiyat Hossain, Abdullah Mohammad Saad and Mohammad Rabby Mridha among others, who highlight the fact quite eloquently. The script is based on personal experience, as Hossain’s wife and co-writer of the movie Trilora Khan, has been the primary caregiver for her paraplegic mother for 25 years following a car accident.
Saba is screening at Toronto International Film Festival
The story revolves around 25-year-old Saba, who lives and takes care of her rather demanding mother, Shirin, who has been paralyzed from the waist down after a car accident 20 years ago. As Shirin’s need for medical treatment increases, with the complications with her heart causing significant issues, Saba realizes that she has to find 300,000 taka (around $2500) for an operation that will keep her alive. Selling their house to a developer emerges as an option, but her pleas to her uncle, who has to convince his wife, Shirin’s estranged sister, to sign the selling, does not exactly go smoothly, with the same applying to Shirin’s signing.
A desperate Saba gets a waitress job in a shady hookah lounge, after the man running it, Ankur, convinces his boss to give her a chance. The problems continue, however, even after Ankur and Saba come closer to each other. A desperate, and essentially obsessed with saving her mother Saba goes even further in her struggle to keep her alive.
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Through a rather dramatic narrative, since the good moments in the film are very few and just take place briefly, Maksud Hossain makes a number of social comments about life in Bangladesh, who is painted here in the darkest, but also quite realistic colors. The fact that the number of millionaires in the country has risen significantly over the last decade, but a rather large part of the population are still living below the poverty line is indicative of Hossain’s critique, which does not stop there though. Corruption, which seems to take place even in the lower echelons of society, a health system that does not seem to work at all, and the ever present issues with water the country faces are also showcased here, creating a rather bleak setting for the protagonists to inhabit.
In such a setting, even the dreams of the protagonists emerge as something futile. Saba wants to have her mother healthy again so she can finally have a life of her own. That she needs money for it, however, which she cannot find on her own, makes her dream utopic. Ankur wants to raise money and leave for Europe, but the way he proceeds on doing that is not exactly ideal, and the problems he inevitably stumbles upon are also indicative of life in the county, even if in surprising fashion in his case. Even Shirin wants to be free of her ill body, even if that means death, but she has stumbled upon her daughter’s obsession with keeping her alive with any cost.
It is this aspect of dreams being crushed by reality that induces the movie with one of its two most significant dramatic aspects. The second one is Saba’s obsession with saving her mother, which Hossain portrays as an addiction, with her eventually not caring at all what happens to the people around her, if she is to achieve her goal. At the same time, though, Hossain’s steady directorial hand keeps the movie from becoming another ‘misery porn’, since the forced sentimentalism and the intense melodramatic moments are nowhere to be found here, instead replaced by a permeating sense of drama. Granted, the overall script could probably be interpreted as such, considering the lack of ‘happy’ moments, but both the overall directorial approach and the finale, allow the director to avoid the specific reef.
On the other hand, the European arthouse approach is quite prevalent, particularly regarding the cinematography by Barkat Hossain Polash, whose almost constant focus on the protagonist through intense close ups leaves a particularly ‘French’ flavor. This is not an issue, under any circumstances, and particularly since Mehazabien Chowdhury as Sabba gives a great performance, with the realism and sense of measure she presents her character essentially dictating the aesthetics of the whole film.
And talking about the acting, Mostofa Monwar is excellent once more as Ankur, a man who seems to have both God and Devil within him, in another performance grounded on realism. Lastly, Rokeya Prachy plays the bitter but quite disillusioned Shirin with gusto, in a performance that steals the show a number of times.
Sameer Ahmed’s editing is also on a very high level, with the movie retaining a mid-tempo instead of the excruciatingly slow we see in these kinds of dramas usually, while at 95 minutes, it does not overextend its welcome at all.
“Saba” is a competent debut and an overall competent film that will satisfy all fans of realist social/family dramas. Now Hossain only needs to move away from what Western/European film festivals select from countries such as Bangladesh, in order to come up with a true masterpiece. Personally, I expect him to do so quite soon.
