Saturday Afternoon 2023 Movie Review
Directed by Mostafa Sarwar Farooqi, Sabbath Day is dedicated to the terrorist takeover of a Bangladeshi city restaurant and preserves the unity of place, time and action. Thus, the viewer experiences the entire time of capture along with the characters in real action. Somewhere it slows down, somewhere it grows, but it does not cease to interest the viewer throughout the film.
The fanatical Islamists who captured the peacefully dining people are presented in the picture as primitive and dangerous. They ask their victims the most stupid questions and determine the truth of their faith by very dubious signs. Knowing the Koran worse than the hostages, they pronounce judgments close to absurdity. They would be funny if they were not so dangerous in their primitiveness.
The danger, according to the general concept of the film, comes from the primitiveness of the mind and soul. Particularly indicative in this sense is the last on-screen phrase of the head of the operation, said in relation to the last of the remaining hostages, who turned out to be a true Muslim: “If he dies for Islam, then what are we for?”.
The picture raises a topical issue in the era of the global fight against terrorism: what are the criteria for assessing the truth of faith and who is the judge? How legitimate is it to break into a restaurant in broad daylight and shoot everyone in a row, even if the visitors are not dressed the way the shooter would like? Why is the life of an ant worthy of respect, but the life of a Hindu who came to Bangladesh to establish trade relations is not?
The courage and honesty of the authors of the film, who dared to take on this sensitive topic, deserves respect. The open condemnation of terrorism, any kind of religious bigotry, and the mere faux pas of invading privacy is thematically brought to the fore. The heroes exclaim: “What kind of society have we built?”. However, it is respect for the individual, his freedom and personal space, above all, that are signs of society.
