Moin Hussain’s “Sky Peals”
Sky Peals (2023) - Moin Hussain, United Kingdom
“Not for everyone, but I think it will strike a chord for anyone who has felt alienated or has been frustrated with society’s desire to pigeon hole us into specific groups.”
★★★★
Alienated Adam(Faraz Ayub) is an introverted outsider from a mixed heritage background working at a fast food burger joint at a motorway service station. Though he’s in his thirties, it is in the vein of a coming-of-age story as he struggles to find his voice, coming to terms with his mixed heritage and it’s here that Hussain brings in science fiction elements to explore this. Coming from an extremely mixed background and suffering crippling shyness in my youth, I empathised with Adam’s questioning his identity, even his humanity. The world like’s to categorise people in absolute terms and often times when the music stops and people sit in their chairs, it’s often the mixed race people who are left behind. Adam is trapped between worlds.
As a loner, he’s invisible to much of the world, often dismissed as if he were a liminal person which makes it all the more painful when people choose to connect with Adam be it family or coworkers. He seems surprised when this happens as if questioning why someone would want to connect to his tribeless self. Seeing one such person going into a Christian church feels almost like a loss, but it isn’t just white or Christian society where he feels out of place. Visting a Mosque, he’s clearly uncomfortable. Again, he feels stranded between worlds he believes require all or nothing.
Dialogue light and with a tempo closer to Jarmusch, its fantastic elements remain on the periphery and what we see is a familiar and grounded world. Visuals use the everyday to show the science fiction elements; the service station with its lights at night look like a spaceship, its neon interiors echoing the lighting of dystopian futures we’ve seen in other films. Glitching security footage and over exposed elements in the film (shot in 35mm) add to an almost dream-like atmosphere which echoes Adam’s mindset as he navigates the world. Sharps cuts do well to wrong foot Adam and gives us a sense of the challenges Adam has in inhabiting the world. Faraz Ayub’s lead performance is the anchor and it’s sublte but powerful, mousy but obstinate, out of control but methodical, he plays like an elemental of isolation.
Despite the almost maudlin tone, there’s also good humour throughout to offer counterbalance. Overall, it’s a lovely film and a strong feature length debut from Hussain. I had the fortune of seeing this with Moin Hussain himself and interestingly, I saw a lot of Adam in his interactions and how he carried himself after the screening; he confirmed in the Q&A that Adam was at least partially modelled after himself. Not for everyone, but I think it will strike a chord for anyone who has felt alienated or has been frustrated with society’s desire to pigeon hole us into specific groups.
I was lucky enough to attend the Sky Peals Q&A at the BFI and though they edited out how I made everyone jump by the speed with which I raised my hand, you can still hear Moin’s thorough answer to my question on the casting of the film.
