2012 South African comedy, Material, has been making some noise over the past couple of years, and upon review it’s not hard to see why, but there’s a feeling that more could have been done about this film that symbolises a generational gap and finding your own place in the world.
Material follows the story of Cassim Kaif (real like South African comic Riaad Moosa), an Indian-born South African Muslim who dreams of becoming a stand-up comic. Cassim’s dreams are big, far too big for his family. His father Ebrahim Kaif (Vincent Ebrahim), is a traditional Muslim and in his later years a stubborn man who believes Cassim’s place is taking over the shop he owns—a family business. Business is poor for the family and the shop is constantly losing money, the father is at odds with his brother/Cassim’s uncle, over an unknown dispute many years ago, leaving a huge line drawn between the family. Cassim is torn between his love for his father (and family) and his desires to follow his own path and dreams. With the help of his best friend Yusuf (Joey Yusuf Rasdien), Cassim draws up a plan to continue his stand-up secretly while helping his father run the shop. Of course all does not go to plan leading to a showdown between Cassim and Ebrahim.
While the story for Material is strong and keeps mostly on track, it’s the somewhat bland and at times the non-existent side-stories that really take away from the film. Cassim is continually urged on by his family to find himself a partner in life and develops a crush on Zulfa (Carishma Basday), a girl from his childhood. We see them interact twice, and one cutaway scene, in the entire film. We don’t know their relationship and we don’t really care about their relationship and it all seems like a foil to (barely) explore the pressure on him as a young man to find himself a wife. Then we have the back story of his father’s feud with the uncle. Which again is very fleeting and only explored through the extremely rushed ending. While the need for some depth is understandable, Material gets by just fine exploring the ideas of Youth vs Tradition and at times religion and how it all plays in together.
Material’s story is one you’d think predictable, a father from his time failing to understand his son living in a new, modern time. How the older generation fights the new ways rapidly surrounding them and how the young born into it openly accepts them. But there’s more to this story than the typical black and white as Ebrahim searches to understand why his son wants to do something that he has no comprehension of and his son attempts to walk a line between traditionalism and modernism.
The film’s core is solid, but at times the execution fails to deliver. You never really feel the genuine struggles and conflicts for our protagonist, instead skipping quite aimlessly forward in time for the good part of two minutes before, once again, the character reverts back to his original decisions in the latter parts. The last 20 minutes are a rush-fest which results in never really getting the emotional payoff the film was obviously looking for. If done better it could have worked because it’s very easy to see how the end was supposed to play out, it just lacked conviction. That’s just a blip on what is, on the whole, a warm and delightful film though. With an all-round good cast and some genuinely funny moments, especially coming from the (I would guess) live stand-up bits from Riaad Moosa in the form of his character, Material manages to tell a story we’ve seen before but still make it fresh for the audience.
Rating: While starring an array of Indian talent, this is far from a Bollywood film and instead a sweet comedy and a deep drama about the conflicts of family (6/10).
Material is available on Itunes now (at least in the UK).
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