Nasir is bookended by images of the titular character lying down unconscious, with each of them carrying vastly different connotations. While the opening shot is accompanied by a supremely beautiful rendition of the Azaan, as the camera surreptiously zooms in at an imperceptible pace, the closing frame is an extreme long shot that basks in the stillness of the night. It is a moment when the film, so saturated with the din of everyday life until this point, must also take pause along with the viewer who's just been rendered speechless.
A spectre haunts Nasir, the spectre of religious intolerance: festering within the hearts and minds of Indian people despite their lofty personal ideals and claims of 'unity in diversity'. It takes us along the daily rhythms of a man, with glimpses of his quiet desperation to save up enough to enroll his son into a special school and find treatment for his cancer-ridden mother, despite the flurry of unavoidable expenses. The completely unassuming texture of the drama, helped along by a meticulous sonic design that renders Nasir's universe all the more tactile, reminds us that his forthcoming plight isn't some out-of-the-ordinary exceptional event: but rather, it is the daily reality of thousands and could happen to any of us anywhere.
As the film works its way towards a harrowing denouement (which can be somewhat anticipated), the way it methodically exposes the vulnerabilities of the common man-lacking both financial and political protective power-paves the way for the questions its raises. Thus when the repeating pattern of the steadfast camera and measured framing choices breaks suddenly and without warning-into a handheld frenzy of bodies and chants of "Hail Mother India!"-it catches you off-guard while you are dreaming alongside Nasir of a better future, both for him and his country.
Indeed, you are forced to ask, what kind of a mother would sacrifice her own children? Ultimately, it is the director's own words about his film that resonate the hardest: "I would love to see the day when I cannot recognise the political reality of the film. It would give me great relief for the film to become politically irrelevant someday when all this hatred was only seen and experienced as a thing of the past."
