The Illegal is Hassan's story but the larger picture it crafts pulls into its purview fragments that speak of immigrants from Iraq, Korea and Mexico - these are people who, like Hassan and the avuncular restaurant supervisor Babaji (Iqbal Theba), are trapped in a situation they cannot escape. Yet, in the end, it is a film with a universal appeal, reflective of the wider reality of undocumented workers in the US. It is firmly rooted in the everyday, in the nondescript. The films of Fellini are evoked because Hassan is an admirer of the Italian legend, but there is nothing Felliniesque about The Illegal. The austere nature of the storytelling results in a considerable heightening of the relatability of the odds that threaten to derail Hassan's plans - well-laid but vulnerable to circumstances he has no control over.Īt the film school, a professor (William Moses), advises him to put more of himself into the screenplay he writes in the first semester. It treats Hassan's personal crises - they stem as much from the upheavals he encounters in the US as from the problems his family back in New Delhi faces as a result of a medical crisis - with empathy, detachment and subtlety. The tale has huge scope for melodrama but The Illegal does well to keep overt sentimentality at bay. His is a voyage of self-discovery in which losses far outweigh the gains. The boy's thought processes emerge in bold relief as he encounters one roadblock after another and is hard-pressed to devise ways of dealing with them. The director employs the voice of the principal character to tell crucial parts of the story in the form of a read-aloud film screenplay, a stream-of-consciousness approach that makes the narrative deeply affecting. It provides a sort of a peep into a mind grappling with conflicting impulses. The Illegal has an intimate, diary-like quality. It is quite apparent that she is somebody who matters a great deal to the boy who is about to pack his bags and give up the security of home for the pursuit of a dream that may or may not come true.
"You are a fighter," the doting elder sibling says after some thought. Prophetic words those!Ĭut to his sister Mahi (Shweta Tripathi), who, too, is exhorted to come up with "parting words" on camera. He needs these words, he says, "for the times when I am down and ready to give up". When we first meet Hassan, he is doing what he loves best: seeing the world through a camera lens and recording "words of wisdom" from his mother (Neelima Azim) a week ahead of his departure for the US of A. His father (Adil Hussain) takes a bank loan to send him to a cinema school. Suraj Sharma plays Hassan Ahmed, a boy from an Old Delhi family of modest means.
The director's supremely steadfast hand and the lead actor's quietly proficient performance ensure that the film never veers off track. The plight of the hero of The Illegal highlights the nature of human aspiration and what happens to it when it has to reckon with the vagaries of the harsh real world. The steep descent from here on mirrors the experiences of many others who arrive in the US in the hope of finding new avenues but hit dead ends in an alien land. His maternal uncle's home isn't quite what he expected it to be. The accommodation he has in mind in LA proves to be a non-starter. His first brush with disappointment is almost immediate. He learns the hard way that a plunge into the unknown is fraught with risk. But once he is there, it is life that schools him. He is on his way to the US to join a Los Angeles film school. The protagonist of The Illegal is a talented Daryaganj boy who appears at the outset to have everything well under control. The director and the actor work in concert with great felicity to present a moving portrait of a young man as a struggling immigrant whose dreams take a backseat when duty and need paint him into a corner.
A disarmingly simple yet highly insightful take on the perils of chasing the American dream without a safety net, The Illegal is an English-language film written and directed by Danish Renzu ( Half Widow) and featuring Suraj Sharma ( Life Of Pi) in the lead.
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