Barkhad Abdirahman ('Captain Phillips') plays
a Somali refugee who wanders the streets of Minneapolis trying to rid himself
of a canine assistant.
Exploring the experience of Somali
immigrants in America with a mix of social-realism and whimsy, Musa Syeed's
winning A Stray relies on a cinematic device at least
as old as Chaplin. Pairing a momentarily homeless young man with a grubby mutt
in a similar plight, Syeed allows himself only as much sentimentality as is
required to keep this from looking to prospective audiences like a feel-bad
tale of outsiders in an oppressive world. Modest but pleasant, the picture will
likely fare better on video, relying on slow-build word of mouth, than in its
limited theatrical release.
Barkhad Abdirahman, one of the
hijackers in Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips, here plays Adan, one of the
thousands of Somalis who resettled in the Minneapolis area around the time of
their country's civil war. Unemployed and estranged from his mother, he's
sharing a cramped apartment with a half-dozen friends when domestic tensions
erupt and leave him homeless.
He winds up taking shelter in a local
mosque and is faced with a temptation straight from Les Miserables; when he decides not to steal money
from the donation box, he and an imam share a prayer — not just for
forgiveness, but that God will give Adan a friend to help him on his path to a
righteous life.
Neither of them feels the need to
specify this friend should be human, and both Allah and a century's worth of
moviemakers know that a cute dog can open doors for the downtrodden where a
human sidekick might not. They can also, in this case, close them: When Adan
accidentally hits a stray with a new employer's car and brings him back to
work, the boss (Faysal Ahmed, another of the Captain Phillips crew) is furious, responding that he
prays in this place and a dog makes it unclean. Other Muslims will react
similarly over the course of the next few days, and Adan generally sees the
pooch as an albatross.
He wanders all over town trying to get
rid of the thing — visiting an old girlfriend in her college dorm, for
instance, only to feel the sting of her rejection anew. (How can she look down
on his imperfect English, he asks the mutt, when he speaks four languages to
her one?) Somewhere along the way he decides to call the black-spotted furball
Laila (the canine actor's name is Ayla), and each time he thinks he has found a
safe home for her, or even just a guilt-free place to ditch her, she winds up
back in the duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
Syeed never resorts to cutesy reaction
shots to anthropomorphize the dog, never lingers long enough to make a viewer
feel manipulated by its obvious cuteness. And at the other end of the spectrum,
he doesn't dwell on the misfortune of his human protagonist. The film matter-of-factly
observes that the man is always looking for a place he can shut his eyes for a
few minutes, is often hungry, and doesn't seem to know where to turn. But the
tone is never one of despair.
More than once, Adan passes through
rooms where TVs play footage showing a new generation of refugees, Syrians who
have it much worse than he does. But even in a few scenes where he deals with a
federal agent who promises him housing in return for information about his
fellow immigrants, A Stray has no obvious political or moral
agenda. It lets Adan do the talking, in atmospheric lap-dissolve interludes
where a voiceover turns out to represent his silent prayers to a deity he
worries is ignoring him. "Know that I am on a path," he eventually
assures the listener he can't see or feel, "the best that I can
find."
Production
company: Vilcek Foundation
Distributor:
IFP Screen Forward
Cast:
Barkhad Abdirahman, Ayla, Faysal Ahmed, Fathia Absie, Hassan Ali Mohamud,
Jamaal Farah, Ifrah Mansour
Director-Screenwriter:
Musa Syeed
Producer:
Jamila Wignot
Director
of photography: Yoni Brook
Editor:
Kamau Bilal
Composers:
Rayzak Hassan, Brandon Scott
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