Stake S St ake k Land ke Directed by Jim Mickle Starring Nick Damici, Connor Pa o l o, K e l l y M c G i l l i s Released June 17
The Taqwacores T Ta qwa w cores wa Directed Starring D e Wu l f, Released
by Eyad Zahra Bobby Naderi, Noureen Dominic Rains June 17
072 T h e A p o c a l y p s e N o w I s s u e
n Stake Land, Land a plague of vampires has turned America into a barbaric waste peopled by weird cultists and locked-down communities. When young Martin’s (Connor Paolo) parents are killed, he is taken under the wing of a grizzled campaigner known as ‘Mister’ (Nick Damici), who teaches him the art of removing the prefix from the undead. Together they travel towards a possibly mythical safe haven somewhere in the far north, and along the way pick up a nun, a pregnant girl and an ex-Marine. Director Jim Mickle kicks things off rather hectically, including a dubious early scene where Mister growls charismatically at Martin while rubbing garlic oil into his favourite stake. After that, though, the film relaxes into an elegiac story of life on the trail that puts you in mind of Walter Hill’s bucolic western The Long Riders, while the use of Paolo as narrator seems like a nod to the voiceovers in Terrence Malick’s classic movies. The apocalypse has had mixed results. Although anarchy reigns in the wilderness – thanks to the Christian Brotherhood, a bunch of oversexed crazies who believe that vampires have been sent to punish the wicked – other communities show a touching adherence to the ways of a more civilised past, putting on street markets and dances, and stocking their shops with faded frocks. But the abiding impression is of humanity’s smallness and irrelevance
n amalgamation of ‘Taqwa’ – an Islamic word denoting love and fear of Allah – and ‘hardcore’, Taqwacore was originally little more than the rebellious dream of disillusioned young Muslim writer Michael Muhammad Knight, whose novel of the same name (originally photocopied and passed out manifesto-style in car parks) is here adapted for the screen. Yusef (Bobby Naderi), a first-generation Pakistani student beleaguered by well-meaning parents, struggles to adapt to a new life when he moves into a house of Muslim punks. Newly ensconced in a world where his tattooed, alcohol-drinking, drug-taking housemates approach their religion as something to be interrogated and reassembled accordingly – as one character puts it, “Allah is too big and too open for my Islam to be small and closed” – Yusef finds his own mind slowly opening, until his world is finally exploded by a party in which local Taqwacore bands are invited to the house to play. Neatly structured across the course of an academic year, with the punks’ subversive challenging of Islam stabilised by our alignment with the straight-laced Yusef, the film is a sensitive examination of some thorny terrain, touching on (among other things) pre-marital sex, homosexuality and the place of women within the faith. Director Eyad Zahra’s adaptation of the novel is not entirely comfortable, with dialogue that sometimes feels unnaturally dropped into the
as, trekking north, the protagonists dwindle into the vastness of the landscape. Which isn’t to say that characterisation is overlooked. The script (written by Mickle and Damici) evokes in an unforced way the relationships that develop on the trail. At times their interaction achieves an almost Fordian simplicity. There’s a moment when the pregnant girl stumbles and Mister scoops her up and plods on with her through the snow.You know, and she knows, that he will carry her forever if he has to. The third act dips briefly into Resident Evil mode, but after that the film finds its feet again and delivers a deeply felt conclusion, poised between hope and realism. Julian White
Anticipation.
Hordes of the undead? Fangs ver y much!
Enjoyment. T h i s
beautiful vampire movie drives a stake right through your hear t.
In Retrospect. A f i l m t h a t shrugs off its small budget to present a meditation on sur vival and suffering.
characters’ mouths – not least a scene in which one ill-fated character complains about being “wrapped up in my mismatching of disenfranchised cultures”, a sentence that must have been lifted directly from Knight’s text. The film comes into its own as it careers towards the final spree, with fast-cut, hand-held footage of parties and bands injecting a much-needed vigour. The last few minutes are suffused with both an intense, frenetic energy and pathos, as the kids strain to understand and come to terms with their uneasy positioning within and without their faith. Despite suffering from some flimsy performances, The Taqwacores is exhilarating for its unusual perspective and the boldness of its inquiring style. Chloe Roddick
Anticipation. A
first feature from an unknown director, about a niche subject.
Enjoyment. A
slow star ter that ultimately finds a frenetic, p u n k y e n e r g y.
In Retrospect. F a r - f r o m p e r f e c t but bravely interrogates a difficult subject.