Zero Bridge
R
The fact that Tariq Tapa's Zero Bridge, an Independent Spirit Award nominee, has arrived on these shores and has been forged on such bare, simple terms makes it hard to quibble with the film's more glaring faults. This story of a 17-year-old 9th-level dropout living in Srinagar and making money off of pickpocketing, doing other students' homework, and working construction with his uncle beats a path similar to other tales of oppressive turmoil in democracy-starved, deeply misogynistic lands. But the sheer ability shown by Tapa, who was born in the US but shotZero Bridge entirely in Srinagar, more than makes up for the film's indulgences in conventional narrative turns.
Shot on DV on a bone-thin budget, Zero Bridge takes little time establishing the military state that 17-year-old Dilawar (Mohamad Imran Tapa) lives under daily. As Dilawar awaits his cousin on the titular structure, a soldier warns him that he could get shot for just standing around and that he should move on, right as his cousin picks him up. The cousin ends up being a crook and when Dilawar shows how easily he can pick up a lady's handbag, the cousin tries to stiff him and gets them both thrown in jail. On radios and television, reports of uprisings, assassinations, and corruption set the scene for a volatile backdrop but even as Dilawar's uncle (Ali Mohammad Dar) argues with an official that says prisoners must be "proven innocent" of all charges, the violence and pain of Dilawar's story remains tied to personal decisions, wise and not so much.
Tapa's cast is strictly non-professional, and he takes advantage of it by reveling in their natural behavior and using it to lend nuance to his characters; he likes to hold on faces especially, waiting for answers or lingering in condemning silence. There's plenty of the latter between Dilawar and his uncle when it comes to Dilawar's working life and the fact that the uncle adopted him after the boy's parents ostensibly abandoned him. Dreaming of reconnecting with his mother and moving to Delhi, Dilawar takes every job he can find, legal or not, including a position as a right-hand man for a belligerent playboy who builds and sells houseboats. On the sunny side, however, his business dealings with his uncle bring him in contact with Bani (Taniya Khan), a slightly older shipping clerk who plays chess, studied physics in America, and is saving up to return to the states.
Of course, it doesn't help that Bani was the owner of the handbag Dilawar nabbed, which also held her passport but their tentative courtship goes on as the young multi-tasker begins receiving divine retribution at every turn. The uncle finds the homework Dilawar helped forge and steals both that and Dilawar's money, leading to a massive beating by his clients. A joint plan struck between Bani and Daliwar to flee to Delhi together is hatched right around the time Bani is ostensibly married off to her cousin but the essential feel-bad trajectory that the film follows guarantees that it's a plan built for hitches.
Religious patriarchy wins again, but the film puts more emphasis on the naturalism of the setting and the non-professional actors than it does on the pulses and beats of Tapa's screenplay. There are enough simple interactions, such as Dilawar translating headlines for his uncle or Dilawar's friends and clients giving him tips on how to pick up an older woman, that suggest characters and stories not beholden to the sappy narrative to make Zero Bridge feel just a bit more sincere than the standard-issue message movie painted as a cry for freedom. There is great promise shown here, but one hopes that Tapa's next film will be more remarkable for its content and form than the utterly amazing fact that it is being shown to a paying public audience at all.
Shot on DV on a bone-thin budget, Zero Bridge takes little time establishing the military state that 17-year-old Dilawar (Mohamad Imran Tapa) lives under daily. As Dilawar awaits his cousin on the titular structure, a soldier warns him that he could get shot for just standing around and that he should move on, right as his cousin picks him up. The cousin ends up being a crook and when Dilawar shows how easily he can pick up a lady's handbag, the cousin tries to stiff him and gets them both thrown in jail. On radios and television, reports of uprisings, assassinations, and corruption set the scene for a volatile backdrop but even as Dilawar's uncle (Ali Mohammad Dar) argues with an official that says prisoners must be "proven innocent" of all charges, the violence and pain of Dilawar's story remains tied to personal decisions, wise and not so much.
Tapa's cast is strictly non-professional, and he takes advantage of it by reveling in their natural behavior and using it to lend nuance to his characters; he likes to hold on faces especially, waiting for answers or lingering in condemning silence. There's plenty of the latter between Dilawar and his uncle when it comes to Dilawar's working life and the fact that the uncle adopted him after the boy's parents ostensibly abandoned him. Dreaming of reconnecting with his mother and moving to Delhi, Dilawar takes every job he can find, legal or not, including a position as a right-hand man for a belligerent playboy who builds and sells houseboats. On the sunny side, however, his business dealings with his uncle bring him in contact with Bani (Taniya Khan), a slightly older shipping clerk who plays chess, studied physics in America, and is saving up to return to the states.
Of course, it doesn't help that Bani was the owner of the handbag Dilawar nabbed, which also held her passport but their tentative courtship goes on as the young multi-tasker begins receiving divine retribution at every turn. The uncle finds the homework Dilawar helped forge and steals both that and Dilawar's money, leading to a massive beating by his clients. A joint plan struck between Bani and Daliwar to flee to Delhi together is hatched right around the time Bani is ostensibly married off to her cousin but the essential feel-bad trajectory that the film follows guarantees that it's a plan built for hitches.
Religious patriarchy wins again, but the film puts more emphasis on the naturalism of the setting and the non-professional actors than it does on the pulses and beats of Tapa's screenplay. There are enough simple interactions, such as Dilawar translating headlines for his uncle or Dilawar's friends and clients giving him tips on how to pick up an older woman, that suggest characters and stories not beholden to the sappy narrative to make Zero Bridge feel just a bit more sincere than the standard-issue message movie painted as a cry for freedom. There is great promise shown here, but one hopes that Tapa's next film will be more remarkable for its content and form than the utterly amazing fact that it is being shown to a paying public audience at all.
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