NEW YORK, Jan 23 — The endearing title characters of Jay Dockendorf’s film “Naz & Maalik” are 18-year-old best friends who recently became lovers, living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a Brooklyn neighbourhood in the throes of gentrification. Naz (Kerwin Johnson Jr.) and Maalik (Curtiss Cook Jr.) are closeted and Muslim, and especially for Naz, the Islamic taboo against homosexuality weighs heavily.
Both live with observant Muslim families for whom any sex outside of marriage is forbidden. Naz’s disapproving sister, Cala (Ashleigh Awusie), discovers their secret and teasingly threatens to expose them.
In a production note, the director explains that the movie was inspired by his conversations with a closeted Muslim graduate student from Brooklyn. In the aftermath of September 11, that student recalled, undercover agents for the New York City Police Department and the FBI conducted door-to-door interviews with Muslim residents, infiltrated mosques and pressured civilians accused of petty crimes to become informants.
Both Naz and Maalik are subject to mild harassment by these authorities. A plainclothes police officer offers to sell them a gun. Before a prayer meeting at a neighbourhood mosque, the imam welcomes any “undercover police or federal agents” in a tone of cheerful sarcasm.
The film, while observing the surveillance the young men endure, doesn’t make more of it than they do themselves. It is a continual annoyance they have learned to live with, although, in Naz, you sense a rising outrage. The most insistent thorn in their sides is an officious FBI agent (Annie Grier). Because Naz is afraid, he lies to her about his whereabouts on a night he spent with Maalik. She warns him that lying to an FBI agent is a federal crime.
The film, set on a Friday afternoon, is essentially a dual portrait of the pair and of their neighbourhood. At a convenience store, they buy lottery tickets, scented oils and saint prayer cards, which they hawk to pedestrians. The neighbourhood is facing rapid development, and the camera lingers on a hideous new high-rise apartment building.
As the lovers wander around Brooklyn, they bicker and make up, idly converse about current events and speculate about the future. Maalik is outgoing and optimistic, and Naz reserved and slightly paranoid. While selling his wares on the street, Naz is picked up by an older man, but seems only dimly aware that a potential sale is really a sexual come-on. The movie has a keen eye for panhandlers and oddballs.
In scenes set on the subway, where they sell candy and peanuts, “Naz & Maalik” recalls Sam Fleischner’s 2014 gem, “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors,” about an autistic boy who gets lost on the subway on the eve of Hurricane Sandy.
But “Naz & Maalik” isn’t as well made and is bedevilled by technical problems that include a musical soundtrack that obscures the dialogue. Although the screenplay maintains a natural flow, the film has an overall tendency to ramble. A rushed, extraneous scene involving the purchase of a halal chicken for the birthday dinner of Maalik’s mother seems shoehorned into the movie.
Despite its deficiencies, “Naz & Maalik” feels authentic, and Johnson and Cook bring their characters completely alive. — The New York Times
Additional information:
“Naz & Maalik” is not rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes.
