A multi-talented figure, Usman Riaz celebrated a breakthrough when his creation The Glassworker was acclaimed as the first 2D animated hand-drawn feature from Pakistan. Produced by the Pakistani Mano Animation Studios which Riaz, the director, is a co-founder, The Glassworker has been screened at the Cannes Film Festival and the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
The Glassworker is inspired by Usman Riaz’s own experiences growing up in Pakistan immediately after the fact of the September 11. While that was a turbulent period that this film is not set in, the underlying questions surrounding war, creativity and humanity’s ability to endure are well interwoven into the narrative.
The film’s protagonist is Vincent, a glassblower, who works together with his father, Thomas, in a small town that resembles Pakistan. Their world is constantly tipped outside normality with the arrival of an army colonel and his daughter Alliz as a war looms.
This caused a lot of trouble for Thomas, a widowed man who had glass blown workshop in the basement of a glass shop, and had a daughter and an apprentice named Vincent, which was a combination of bad luck, however, teenage Vincent was eager to learn. The plot goes through an extreme time scope as in the beginning the protagonist is an adult, who gets ready for his lifetime exhibit in which he feels recapitulative. Riaz steps back in time during a mighty turmoil when the protagonist’s mother goes missing, and the child’s pacifist father is eventually immersed in a consistent ostracism pain that later leads to a constant bullying of his son Vincent.
The central theme of Glassworker can be likened to a Romeo and Juliet kind of story, and they are accompanied by a subplot that focuses on the father-son relationships, with the father-figures of both Vincent and Alliz on separate sides of the feuds with distinct ideas as to how the way forward should be. However, their offspring are in love with the same medium of art Vincent with glass and Alliz with the sounds of a violin. The dilemma does not, however, come to an end with the younger generation.
Vincent’s father is blackmailed to provide assistance to the military even though he is against both war and murder while Alliz’s walk receives humiliation by Vincent for not being an original, since she is always performing someone because of her basic limitations. Vincent, who has the paradox of fealty to his father and father’s ideology vs feelings for the attractive redhead Alliz has his own set of troubles–class conflicts, discontent for his anti-war sentiments, and so on.
The predicament that both these characters face is that Vincent and Alliz’s fathers were bound to their artistry and established customs, and to live life as Vincent and Alliz wanted they would need to confront their fathers and free themselves from limitations. And living life on their own terms.
Riaz and Moya O’Shea wrote the screen play with no defined geographical boundaries in their storyline, giving it a classic touch; but the circumstances of the British-India are quite easy to guess. Most simplistic is the narration in the film, where it is enough to say that it is mostly given by Vincent who is an adult and is looking back at his adolescent years lived in a country which is teeming with violence and headstrong upon certain decisions of youth. War activity remained mostly beyond the borders of the Waterfront Town and only on some occasions was the subject city attacked.
In a somewhat unnecessary fashion the narrative includes a touch of magical realism in the shape of a djinn which may as well have been purely Vincent’s fantasy. This entrepreneur cannot change the course of the story to the great extent, but does bring emotion to his story.
Such steampunk parts of the plot can be treated rather as a work of respect for the hand-drawn animation made famous by studio Ghibli, perhaps even more so to Miyazaki’s movies. This longing fit into the narrative very well but some isometric bird-eye view shots reminded the old days of the Final Fantasy series.
The Glassworker appears to be the film for our times. Although it is referred to as a family drama, this drama has a strong humanistic orientation towards the youth, covering issues of war and its consequences on the future in uncertain times.
Rather than being hopeless and giving up, the youth is depicted as looking forward and continuing their devotion to art, making it one of the means of survival and coping with overwhelming experiences at rather a young age. The film in question speaks about the true role of art–it provides peace and strength in the most difficult times.
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