I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like… victory. Someday this war’s gonna end.”

For many, that monologue from Apocalypse Now is the definitive Robert Duvall moment: a blend of bravado, absurdity and menace delivered with unnerving calm.

For those of us who grew up in Pakistan in the shadow of ideological debates about empire, non-alignment and resistance, the wars in Indochina had a special resonance. Left-wing activists in Pakistan — students, trade unionists, writers — saw Vietnam not merely as a distant battlefield, but as a moral drama about superpower intervention. In drawing rooms and campus canteens, names such as Hanoi and Saigon were invoked alongside discussions of Palestine and Latin America.

When Duvall’s Lt Col Bill Kilgore spoke of napalm as “victory”, the line reverberated far beyond Hollywood. It sounded like the distilled psychology of imperial hubris. Yet it was not the first time I had encountered Duvall.

Actor Robert Duvall, who passed away February 15, specialised across six decades in portraying authority figures. But his real power lay in his trust of understatement

Like many of my generation, I had met him earlier in The Godfather as Tom Hagen, the cool-headed consigliere of the Corleone family. Only later did I return to his film debut in To Kill A Mockingbird and discover the shy, almost spectral Boo Radley.

Watching those two performances within a short span, I admired how profoundly he had developed within a decade — from silent outsider to composed insider, from moral witness to institutional operator.

In To Kill A Mockingbird, Duvall speaks not a word. Boo Radley is more presence than personality, a figure shaped by prejudice and gossip in a racially divided Alabama town. The film’s courtroom drama — centred on an innocent black man condemned by a biased system — remains a searing indictment of how justice can falter under social pressure.

For audiences in Pakistan, the theme is painfully familiar. Accused persons belonging to minority communities often struggle to obtain fair hearings when public emotion runs high. Legal processes, though constitutionally grounded, can be distorted by prejudice or intimidation. Boo Radley, misjudged by rumour, symbolises how communities construct guilt before evidence is weighed.

By contrast, in The Godfather, Duvall’s Tom Hagen represents the law as instrument. Hagen is not a flamboyant gangster; he is the rationaliser of violence, the lawyer who gives crime administrative polish. He drafts contracts, negotiates settlements, speaks in measured tones. The performance is unsettling because it is so civilised.

In many societies — including Pakistan — public confidence in the legal profession has occasionally been shaken by instances where lawyers have been perceived as enabling powerful criminal networks rather than merely defending the accused’s rights. Duvall’s Hagen embodies the ethical tension at the heart of advocacy: where does representation end and complicity begin? His quiet authority shows how legality can cloak moral compromise.

A figure of institutional power

A fascination with institutional power runs throughout Duvall’s career. In The Conversation, he appears briefly, yet memorably, as “The Director”, the opaque authority behind a corporate surveillance operation.

Released in the wake of Watergate, the film captured anxieties about wiretapping and the erosion of privacy. Its themes resonate strongly in contexts where intelligence agencies are widely believed to intrude into personal and political life. Pakistan’s own history is punctuated by allegations of surveillance, intercepted communications and the invisible reach of security institutions. Duvall’s character scarcely raises his voice; he does not need to. His calm signals the normalisation of intrusion.

In Network, Duvall shifted from covert authority to corporate evangelism. As Frank Hackett, the ratings-obsessed executive, he proclaims the primacy of the “American business system” with almost theological conviction.

The satire targeted the commodification of news, yet its critique of sensationalism feels universal. In Pakistan’s fiercely competitive television landscape — where talk shows amplify outrage and political polarisation — Network appears less an American curiosity than a cautionary tale. Duvall’s performance captures the zealotry of commerce: profit as creed.

Then came Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. The line about napalm is delivered not as parody but as genuine enthusiasm. Kilgore believes in the righteousness of his mission. That sincerity makes him terrifying.

For Pakistani leftists of the 1960s and 1970s — many of whom marched against American intervention in Vietnam — the character symbolised the psychology of superpower dominance. Yet Duvall did not play Kilgore as a cartoon villain. He infused him with charm and humour, exposing the seductive appeal of militarised masculinity.

Duvall’s later career softened in tone. In Sling Blade, he portrayed a compassionate small-town patriarch, offering steadiness in a fractured community. The performance suggested an actor comfortable with restraint. Where Kilgore strutted, this character listened.

Behind the camera, Duvall demonstrated similar instincts. As the producer of We’re Not the Jet Set, he championed modest, music-inflected storytelling, rooted in working-class life. The film’s beauty lay in its refusal of glamour. It celebrated unpolished voices and rural rhythms rather than celebrity sheen. Duvall’s sensibility gravitated towards authenticity over spectacle — a trait evident across his acting choices.

His poor films and conservative streak to defend the system

Not all projects succeeded. In The Scarlet Letter (1995), an adaptation that veered towards melodrama, even Duvall’s gravitas could not compensate for narrative confusion.

More controversial was Stalin, in which he portrayed the Soviet leader. The production offered a largely one-dimensional depiction, flattening historical complexity into a stark morality play. To this scribe, it resembled Cold War propaganda, maligning the USSR with little attempt at nuance. Whatever one’s judgement of Stalin’s record, the film’s weakness lay in its simplicity.

Duvall, an actor known for layering contradictions, appeared constrained by a script intent on caricature. Politically, Du­­v­all avoided strident activism. He occ­as­ionally expressed conservative sym­pa­t­­hies, yet refrained from Hollywood’s cul­­ture of megaphone politics. His cont­rib­utions were quieter: support for arts initiatives, encouragement of independent filmmakers and advocacy for veterans. In this, he resembled many of his characters — men who believed in systems yet understood their fragility.

Across six decades, Duvall specialised in authority figures — lawyers, generals, executives, patriarchs. Yet he rarely played them as caricatures. He illuminated belief as both strength and blindness. In To Kill A Mockingbird, justice falters under prejudice. In The Godfather, law is bent to shield crime. In The Conversation, surveillance corrodes privacy. In Network, commerce consumes journalism. In Apocalypse Now, militarised conviction veers into delusion.

For audiences in Pakistan, these themes are not abstract. Questions about minority rights, legal ethics, intelligence overreach and media sensationalism remain live debates.

Duvall’s filmography, though distinctly American, speaks to broader anxieties about power and conscience. Watching Boo Radley after Tom Hagen, I admired not merely Duvall’s growth, but his consistency. He trusted understatement. He understood that authority whispered can be more chilling than authority shouted. He refined rather than reinvented himself.

Cinema has lost one of its quiet craftsmen. But his performances endure — measured, intelligent, unsettling. And that monologue about napalm, resonant from Indochina to distant campuses in Pakistan, remains a reminder of how art can capture the psychology of power in a single, unforgettable breath.

The writer is a columnist, educator and film critic. He can be reached at Mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk. X:@NaazirMahmood

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 22nd, 2026

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The art and craft of stop-motion animation has been celebrated in several exhibitions recently, including a show at London’s South Bank Centre and last year’s Tim Burton retrospective at the Design Museum.

Now it’s the turn of Aardman, as the studio celebrates almost half a century of silly characters, cracking jokes and comical villains in a new exhibition in London.

Since its founding in 1972 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, the Bristol-based Aardman has cultivated an identity as one of animation’s most trusted and commercially successful production houses. Animator Nick Park joined in 1985, bringing Aardman Oscar success in 1991 with Creature Comforts — the first of many.

Widespread critical acclaim led to high-profile partnerships with Hollywood companies DreamWorks and Sony Pictures in the early 2000s. But it’s the studio’s homegrown history of feature films, animated shorts, TV series and various other projects that take centre stage at the Young V&A for the new ‘Inside Aardman — Wallace and Gromit and Friends’ exhibition.

Aardman is the British studio behind beloved stop-motion animations such as the Wallace and Gromit films. Now its pioneering creative magic gets a tribute at an exhibition in London

Drawn from the studio’s 50-year legacy, the gallery’s impressive collection of sets, puppets and other behind-the-scenes material provides an affectionate look at the production stories behind some of Aardman’s most celebrated animated creations.

THE CRAFT BEHIND THE ART

The exhibition is a quickfire journey through the techniques and technologies of handmade claymation that have defined the company’s signature animation style.

We learn about the moveable metal armatures and sculpturing of Plasticine, silicone rubber and foam that build Aardman’s three-dimensional models. And we get to see the invisible labour of foley artists (sound creators) and sound designers involved in the realisation of Aardman’s animated screen worlds.

At the centre of the exhibition is the literal flagship piece — the huge galleon from The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists! (2012), which towers over the curated collection of miniatures. Other highlights include the prison cell set from Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024), home to the villainous penguin Feathers McGraw. Visitors can also create their own performances and stop-motion shorts in special interactive booths.

One of the most welcome curiosities is that the archival and audiovisual materials are organised to reflect the various stages of stop-motion animation as a creative process. An impressive collection of pre-production artefacts include never-before-seen storyboards, concept art and illustrations. All are testament to the meticulous craftsmanship of the animators and highlight the almost imperceptible details involved in building stop-motion animation from the ground up.

Lesser-known processes like needle-felting and “dope sheets” (drawings that break down dialogue into the appropriate mouth shapes frame-by-frame) accompany the more recognisable three-dimensional characters that celebrate the artisanal logic powering Aardman’s creativity.

What is clear from this peek inside the magical animated world of Aardman is that its animators are quintessential problem-solvers. The exhibition’s focus on the early Morph shorts reveals how clingfilm can function as an excellent substitute for water.

Similarly, the models and miniatures from A Grand Day Out (1989) show that lentils can have the appearance of well-worn rivets. Even icing sugar can give claymation models a duller, matte look. In the hands of Aardman’s skilled animators, everyday objects and materials can be transformed in all kinds of ways to sell the illusion.

Notable too among the wealth of handmade materials and processes is the spotlight on computer imaging and other forms of digital intervention — a surprise, perhaps, given Aardman’s renowned dedication to working with tangible, material objects. Yet the crude sketches doodled on scraps of paper from which the earliest story and character ideas were formed give way, in the exhibition’s closing stages, to a recognition of other kinds of animated techniques.

Computer-generated layering and 3D printing add in visual effects largely impossible to achieve in stop-motion. Green screens and even virtual reality visualisations help the animators “design and test ideas for sets before building them.” All show how digital technology has come to occupy a central place in the production pipeline of Aardman films.

Rather than obscure such processes behind the lucrative business of handcraft for which Aardman is internationally celebrated, the exhibition rightly makes a virtue of the virtual. The studio chooses not to obscure how and where digital processes have contributed to their big-screen blockbusters — even if their computer-animated films Flushed Away (2006) and Arthur Christmas (2011) are curiously sidelined.

Many visitors will be well-acquainted with the characters and objects brought together for Inside Aardman, yet there is enough devotion to animation as an industrial art form to satisfy creative practitioners and historians alike.

This excellent collection at the V&A show confirms Aardman as masters of their craft within the tradition of British animation, and a studio that can rightfully claim to be the true pioneers of Plasticine.

The writer is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities at King’s College, London in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 22nd, 2026

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THE WEEK THAT WAS

Meri Zindagi Hai Tu | ARY, Fri-Sat 8.00pm

This phenom­enally popular show takes a detour into humour before swinging back to angst-filled trauma bond at breakneck speed.

Kaamyar (Bilal Abbas) cannot forgive Ayra (Hania Aamir) for not believing him when an explicit video of him went viral on the eve of their wedding. Curiously, he does forgive his clingy ex, Faria (Warda Saleem), who drugged him, and orchestrated his sexual assault and release of the video. In fact, he regularly hangs out with her and rejoins their circle of friends, while snubbing and sniping at Ayra, his wife. Writer Radain Shah uses a highly sensitive and painful issue as a clumsy plot point, and is rewarded with commercial success.

As Pakistani dramas have gained a foothold with Indian audiences, the ethical and cultural underpinnings of scripts are shifting for a more generalised, secular gaze, with a thin veneer of family values. Ayra may be an empowered, educated heroine but she has fallen into the traditional role of the “fix-it” daughter-in-law — not only healing Kaamyar and taking care of his grandmother, but talking sense into his bickering parents. The show remains superficially entertaining but, even for its genre, strains the limits of credibility.

Sara Appi | Geo TV, Mon-Tues 8.00pm

This is a story reminiscent of the recent blockbuster, Noor Jehan. Savera Nadeem plays Sara, an elder sister who puts aside hopes of marriage and children to raise her three orphaned brothers. Their happy family is a myth the brothers have forced themselves to believe in.

Sara Appi’s control gave them safety as children, but stifles them as adults. Sara uses emotional blackmail and maintains financial authority over her brothers for complete control. The eldest, Burhan (Sami Khan), is a weak man but somehow persuades a girl (Sidra Niazi) into a secret marriage. The angry matriarch Sara is forced to accept the new bride but humiliates and punishes her to assert dominance and power over the family. The youngest, Usman (Khaqan Shahnawaz), is in love with an independent-minded girl from a wealthy family, and is also afraid to speak up.

All three brothers have stunted personalities and live in constant fear of their older sister, who owns their family business. While this is a reasonably entertaining look at a recurring motif in our cultural fabric, the depth of writing is missing in places. Savera Nadeem performs well as the regal Sara, but has failed to show the vulnerable or feminine side of her character as yet.

Ishq Mein Tere Sadqay | Geo TV, Daily 9.00pm

Two beautiful women who look alike, Hoor and Noor (both played by Anika Zulfikar), and one obsessed lover, Zulfikar Shah (Muneeb Butt), are at the centre of this story from writer Rehana Aftab.

Despite wealth, status and education, Zulfikar is an angry, impulsive man, for whom violence is second nature. He fought his disapproving family to marry Hoor, the one person who loves him and tries to get him into therapy to resolve his issues. On a parallel track, Noor looks just like Hoor, but lives the life of Cinderella as the unpaid servant of her stepmother and quarrelsome stepsisters.

When tragedy strikes Zulfikar, he loses his beloved wife but, to his amazement, he meets her lookalike Noor. Is this a second chance at happiness or more misery for the unfortunate Noor, who is already married to an abusive man? This is a commercial masala-type serial, full of black-and-white characters and lots of melodrama.

What To Watch Out For (Or Not)

Hamrahi | Geo TV, Coming soon

After playing an array of toxic, angry heroes, Danish Taimoor takes the character up a couple of notches with machine guns blazing in the upcoming Hamrahi.

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 22nd, 2026

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