The Glassworker: A Pakistani Animator’s Homage to Hayao Miyazaki by Way of Karachi

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B

A decade in the making, The Glassworker is Pakistan’s first hand-drawn animated feature and last year’s Academy Award submission for best international feature. The film’s primary creator is Usman Riaz, founder of the Karachi-based Mano Animation Studios, who served as the film’s director, animator, co-composer and co-writer.

The protagonist is Vincent — voiced by Teresa Gallagher as a child and Sacha Dhawan as an adult — who is an apprentice to his gruff single father, Tomas (Art Malik). Tomas makes artisanal glass objects in a fictional town called Waterside, turning the local beach sand into graceful glass objects. Tomas doesn’t allow Vincent to go to school, reasoning that he can teach his son everything he needs to know about glassblowing, his destined profession.

In Tomas’s favour, he’s also a dedicated pacifist. When his country goes to war over a disputed territory called “the Great Ravine,” patriotic fervour surges through the population, with most of the men joining the army, and boys joining the Junior Guard.

That makes Vincent and Tomas social pariahs. Things get complicated, in a Romeo and Juliet way, when the young Vincent befriends Alliz (Anjli Mohindra), a violin prodigy and daughter of Colonel Amano (Tony Jayawardena), the fierce military commander who has recently taken command of the city.

The Glassworker has a time-jumping romantic melodrama structure, progressing through letters from Alliz and Vincent as they grow to adulthood, filled with flashbacks to their childhood memories, tested by a romantic rivalry and a rift, and a test of Vincent’s moral mettle, leading to an inevitable reconciliation.

The most distinctive thing about The Glassworker is the animation style and anti-war message, both clearly indebted to Studio Ghibli’s animation master, Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki That’s not a bad thing: Riaz’s art is refined and assiduously detailed, covering every corner of the screen, whether in Tomas’ store with its gleaming glass objects or in the midst of the flaring explosions of a bombing raid.

But imitation invites comparison and The Glassworker is certainly neither as original nor as transporting as Miyazaki’s work.

Another problem is Riaz’s attempt to convey a “universal” anti-war message which may leave viewers puzzled about where and when his story is supposed to take place. The setting, judging by architecture and fashion, appears to be early 20th century (there are steam engines and amphibious airplanes).

The character names, ethnicity, and clothing styles are an undifferentiated mixture of European and South Asian Muslim clothing. In the original Pakistani version, all the characters spoke Urdu. In the worldwide release, they speak English with British accents. Everyone drinks “chai” instead of tea, and children eat gulab jamuns, the hot syrupy South Asian sweets.

There’s also the occasional intrusion by djinns, those supernatural beings of Islamic mythology, seen in the film only indirectly as sparkles of pink and blue reflected light which, at turning points in Vincent’s life, flash about like the fairy Tinkerbell.

The dialogue, on the other hand, definitely does not sparkle: “Without art and music, what do we have in this world full of conflict and war?” Alliz asks. In a moment of rage, Vincent declares, “I’ll show them. I’ll show them all!” But his father Tomas admonishes him. “Don’t let your hatred consume you. We need to be better than that!”

If it earns a D for tone-deaf dialogue, The Glassworker earns an A for ambition and bonus points for the useful reminder that war destroys things and art isn’t shatterproof.

The Glassworker. Directed by Usman Riaz. Written by Usman Riaz and Moya O'Shea. English voice cast: Art Malik, Sacha Dhawan, Anjli Mohindra, Tony Jayawardena and Teresa Gallagher. At Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox August 15.