Halal Love Story | 'Halal Love Story' is about life, love, faith and friendship, says Indrajith

The gifted actor plays Shereef, the lead in the film directed by 'Sudani from Nigeria' director Zakariya Mohammed Versatile actor Indrajith returns to the screen as Shereef in Zakariya Mohammed’s Halal Love Story after movie-goers last saw him as the taciturn and brusque Dr Baburaj with a heart of gold in Aashiq Abu’s blockbuster Virus. Premièring on Amazon Prime on October 15, Halal Love Story has Indrajith playing a middle-class guy with cinema in his dreams. The actor sounds gung-ho as he talks on the phone from Kochi about his character and some of the exciting projects that he was working in before the pandemic struck. Indrajith says he was unable to interact much with the media in 2019 as he was neck-deep in work in different locations. In addition to Halal Love Story, in which he plays a character that is new in his repertoire, he acted in Srinath Rajendran’s Kurup with Dulquer Salmaan, with Nivin Pauly in Rajeev Ravi’s Thuramukham, and Jeetu Joseph’s Ram and so on. “Shooting was going on for some films while some others were in the post-production stage when the lockdown came. All work had to be put on hold. The shooting of Ram, for instance, has been completed in India and the next schedule is in London. We are not sure when we will able to travel for work,” says Indrajith. However, putting aside speculations about the future, Indrajith would rather talk about Shereef. “Halal Love Story is a film of our times. Rooted in the soil, it is about a group of youngsters who try to make a film that is keeping in with their religious beliefs. That is when they realise the challenges they have to overcome. There is a lot of humour but it is organic and woven into the landscape of the story,” says the actor. Shereef, hailing from a conservative family, plunges into the efforts to make a film that stays within the boundaries prescribed by his faith. However, conflicts arise in plenty as a group of professionals try to make a film with an amateur group of film lovers and actors who want to ensure that the film is ‘Halal’, that what is permissible in their faith. “It is about life, love, faith and friendship,” he says. The team decides that since their budget is limited, they would go in for a tele-film and approach Joju George, enacting an aspiring director who is not orthodox in his views. “There are personal and professional conflicts as they try to resolve issues that crop up during the filmmaking. The professionals want their work to be done well and have no patience for the sentiments of members of the cultural organisation that is keen on making a film to reach out to the people. The solutions to overcome or work around those issues often lead to unexpected outcomes. For instance, Shereef is more of an enthusiastic actor than a good one but they are forced to cast him because of certain compulsions,” says Indrajith, unwilling to divulge more about the story. He adds that the dialect is quite different from what he has done so far in his career. “Fortunately, many of the crew members, including Zakariya and Muhsin Parari, the scenarist, belong to Malappuram and all I had to do was listen to them carefully,” explains Indrajith. Talented Grace Antony acts as Indrajith’s pair, Suhara. Amid the planned chaos of a mise-en-scene in Halal Love Story, Shereef, Suhara and Taufeeq (Sharaf U Dheen) along with the other characters gain a new understanding of life and themselves. “Shereef is a layered character. He loves acting and is an enthusiastic actor in street plays and the like put up by the cultural organisation be belongs to. So he jumps at the opportunity to act in the film that is being shot at his place. Through the discussions about the film and its shooting, we get close to the characters and their moral dilemmas,” adds Indrajith. Like others in the industry, he is also impatiently waiting for the day when the film industry starts rolling in earnest without any hurdles. 'Halal Love Story' review: Zakariya's film is funny, heart-warming and necessary Zakariya's strength is the ability to tell a very human story, touching on a number of issues without high drama or a pulsating revolution. Zakariya's films are like watching a flower bloom. The transformation is quiet, the changes slow and almost imperceptible. With every minute, your view of what you're seeing alters, making the wait just as rewarding as the result. In Sudani from Nigeria, his first film, Zakariya made us believe the story is about sevens football; then he made us believe it's a comedy about two cultures coming together due to circumstances; it then became about a son and his troubled relationship with his mother and stepfather. Gently through the humour, surefooted in his storytelling, Zakariya and his team gave us a film that was about many things and yet about the one thing that can heal - love. Halal Love Story, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and which Zakariya, has co-written with Muhsin Parari, has the same force behind it. Suitably, it begins with a picture of hate, the 9/11 attack in the US which led to widespread Islamophobia. But Zakariya doesn't take his camera across the globe to document this. His stories are small, his characters are ordinary, his landscapes are familiar. So, watching the 9/11 footage is Rahim (Nazar Karutheny), a conscientious member of a 'progressive, social' Muslim organisation - they're anti-America and anti-George Bush, they're anti-capitalism but not anti-captitalists, they're artistic but as long as the art is halal. Some of the members decide that just street theatre and protests are not enough to get the point across to the public. They need to do something bigger and what's bigger than cinema? Thus begins an ambitious film (well, telefilm) project, with a motley set of characters. The film has to be entirely halal ('lawful' according to Islamic laws) and not get into the haram (forbidden) territory, and this proves to be quite a tough task. Joju George as the frustrated Siraj, who ends up directing this halal film, is hilarious in nearly every frame. Joju has played the plain-speaking man in quite a few films and yet, you never tire of his acting. Soubin makes a superb cameo as a production sound mixer, his comic timing impeccable as ever. But the real star of the story is Suhara, played by the lovely Grace Antony. Indrajith plays Shareef convincingly, her awkward, somewhat pompous husband, and Zakariya gradually draws a portrait of their marriage in front of our eyes. There are no great tragedies, no sudden upheavals. But the conflict is true to life and completely believable. It is told with the eye of a good observer, the camera focusing on shifting expressions and gestures rather than heavy-handed dialogues to convey emotions. And that is Zakariya's strength, the ability to tell a very human story touching on a number of issues without high drama or a pulsating revolution on screen. There is a moral compass within the film, a right and a wrong, but his characters find their redemption in such an organic way that it makes the viewers empathise with them rather than hating them for their mistakes. As in Sudani from Nigeria, the women characters shine. Unnimaya Prasad and Parvathy have brief but well-defined roles. They're not merely decorative and add meaning to the narrative.The rest of the supporting cast, like Sharaf U Dheen's Thoufeeq too, have little character arcs, not flat lines, that sparkle. Mainstream cinema has only had the Good Muslim or the Bad Muslim on offer. The Good Muslim is nationalistic, embraces other religions and doesn't talk back. The Bad Muslim is a terrorist filled with hate. In Zakariya's films though, you see that there are many ways of being Muslim; conservative believers, liberal belivers, atheists, non-conformists and so on. Just as diverse as any other community. The film doesn't make a song and dance about this; it needn't, when the representation revolves around these characters and isn't tokenistic. The questions that come up in the narrative about religion and religious heads therefore are subtle, sensitively yet assertively raised. Critiquing the unjust status quo is a necessary function of an artist but filmmakers have usually handled religion with kid gloves. Halal Love Story is clever in how it throws its jibes, choosing to create situational comedy out of religious absurdity rather than outright mocking. I wish there had been more clarity on the telefilm that the crew shoots though. While the story-within-the-story becomes a vehicle for the characters in the actual film to express themselves, what they're making is pretty vague. The scenes that the film crew shoot seem quite random and convenient for the moment. But, that is the only complaint with an otherwise wholesome meal, halal or not. Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.