Bringing Little-Known Pakistani Leader Jinnah to Life

The names of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi are synonymous with India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule, but how many know of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan? The question points to the signal achievement of “Jinnah,” which illuminates the character and times of this important but little-known world leader in an absorbing fashion.

Working in English, director Jamil Dehlavi and his co-writer Akbar Ahmed, renowned Cambridge University Islamic scholar, create a sweeping historical epic. The story of Jinnah, a patrician Muslim barrister, connects with any minority leader whose people are locked in a struggle for equality. It’s an epic tale of a man confronted with many hard choices ultimately leading to decisions that would exact an enormous toll in the name of freedom and independence.

The irony that Jinnah is played by a British star, Christopher Lee, cannot go unnoticed. If you can get past that, then it can be said that it affords Lee--who actually resembles Jinnah--the role of a lifetime. The tall, swarthy Lee will always be cherished as one of the icons of horror pictures. “Jinnah” gives him a long overdue major departure from his Dracula image.

The picture opens not long after partition in 1947 with the dying Jinnah--who had been wracked with consumption through his arduous later years--stuck in a car that has run out of gas on a desert road; his devoted sister, Fatima (Shireen Shah), and their entourage are trying to get him medical assistance. The next thing we know, Jinnah is visiting a vast, splendid old library, but one that has computers, our signal that he is now in some kind of afterlife.

It proves more a purgatory, for it is there that Jinnah encounters a scholar (Shashi Kapoor), the man who will serve as the film’s narrator and also as Jinnah’s judge. As it turns out, a device of fantasy serves to illuminate a harsh reality.

Played in his earlier years by Richard Lintern, Jinnah early on was a champion of Indian independence from Britain and Hindu-Muslim unity, declaring solidarity with Gandhi and Nehru.

As time went by, he was to come to regard them as “worthy opponents” as he became increasingly convinced that, as the possibility of an independent India drew nearer, within the Hindu majority the Muslim minority would be endangered by a lack of status and protection.

The Jinnah that emerges in the film is a somber man of high principle who navigates through a complex moral situation. The British Empire’s last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten (James Fox), presiding over the impending end of British rule, apparently accepts with equanimity that his wife, Lady Mountbatten (Maria Aitken), is engaged in a serious love affair with Nehru (Robert Ashby).

On the political front, the filmmakers suggest that Mountbatten does not grasp the plight of the Muslims. He moves up the date of the partition so that the newly formed Pakistan will be virtually defenseless.

Looking back on his life, Jinnah is confronted with his neglect of his beautiful wife (Indira Varma) who died so young, the painful break-off with his daughter and the guilt that he feels for leading his people into so much slaughter in the name of Muslim sovereignty.

The cast is outstanding, including the witty Kapoor (long a mainstay of Indian cinema), Fox, Ashby, Sam Dastor as Gandhi and especially Aitken as the liberated yet reflective Lady Mountbatten and Shah as Fatima, who confronted her British friend about her affair with Nehru and its implications for Pakistan.

But it is Lee who rightly dominates as a formal, largely humorless, upper-class man whose breeding was clearly crucial to the disciplined exercising of his iron will and unflagging courage and adherence to principle at any and all costs. By the time the film is over, Lee is tremendously moving in his ability to illuminate the inner life of a man of unflinching dignity.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: adult themes, bloodshed.

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‘Jinnah’

Christopher Lee: Mohammed Ali Jinnah

James Fox: Lord Mountbatten

Maria Aitken: Edwina Mountbatten

Shashi Kapoor: The Narrator

An Akbar Ahmed presentation of a Dehlavi Films production for the Quaid Project Ltd. Producer-director Jamil Dehlavi. Executive producer Akbar Ahmed. Screenplay by Dehlavi and Ahmed. Cinematographer Nic Knowland. Editors Robert Reitano, Paul Hodgson. Music Nigel Clarke, Michael Csanyi-Wills. Costumes Barbara Rutter. Production designer Michael Porter. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

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