When Mohammed Ahmed received the script for Musk, the latest film from Abu Dhabi director Humaid Al Suwaidi, the actor didn't simply look over it once or twice. "I read it 263 times," he says with some measure of pride. "It always hits me at certain moments of the script. It's always there. There are a few moments that always get me – again and again and again."
While reading a script that many times might be some sort of record, it shows how much the actor and producer cared about the project. He worked with Al Suwaidi on the latter's first feature-length film, 2015's Abdullah, which is about a young man from a conservative family who must hide his love for music. "We share the same interest in cinema," says Ahmed, explaining that the two of them would often deconstruct scripts and movies by filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Terrence Malick.
With Musk, Al Suwaidi delivers another sensitive family drama. Ahmed plays a character called Ahmed, who is in emotional turmoil after giving up his career in museum management to look after his dying father and oversee the family's similarly ailing perfume business. Also facing divorce, Ahmed must contend with his strained relationship with his son, Abdulrahman, 12.
"There are three generations in one story," says Ahmed. "It's the grandfather and his son, and the father and his son."
He references the old saying "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree". "It's actually something you can feel and sense," he says. "Somehow you become your father or your parent without knowing. I was attached to that idea."
Working with newcomers to the industry
Several newcomers to film acting feature in the movie. Theatre and TV veteran Dhaen Jumaa stars as Ahmed's father, while youngster Suhail Aljneibi plays Ahmed's son. "It was his first time acting, his first time in front of the camera. That means you have to be patient," says Ahmed. "At the beginning, it didn't make sense to him that lighting would take hours to arrange or that there wouldn't be only one take … it didn't make sense."
Eventually, the young actor got the hang of things. "By the end he became professional and he was ready for take one, take two, take three," says Ahmed. "And he was a good listener. That's the key in acting."
Did he recognise a little of himself in Aljneibi when he was starting out in his career? "No, he's way ahead of me," says Ahmed. "Slowly I learnt that there was a producer, a director and the crew."
Following his passion
Born and raised in Dubai, Ahmed turned his passion for movies into a profession, studying acting and filmmaking at the Sharjah Art Institute. He has worked on community theatre projects, but it's clear Ahmed welcomes the communal experience that a film shoot such as Musk provides. "We became a big family by the end of the shooting," he says. "It was more of a family film."
That might explain why Al Suwaidi describes Musk as his most personal film. Does Ahmed agree? "Yes, it is true," he says. "If it's not personal, I don't think he'd do it."
It's exactly what they learnt in screenwriting class. "If it's personal, it's always better to tell it," says Ahmed. "It has to be personal. Every page, it's a reflection somehow of you. Even when it comes to acting, if you don't feel connected or it's a reflection of you somehow, you can't play it. So it is personal for the director and it had to be personal for me."
Ahmed, 30, is also a director in his own right – this year he released a short, Maryam, about how a young Emirati woman's dream of becoming an actress clashes with the wishes of her family – and it remains to be seen when we will next see him on screen. "I stopped acting for 2019," he says. "In 2020 I might come back. This was a hard film to make and I needed time to empty the cup and come back stronger. The key is not to make a lot. We have few faces in our pocket. The key is to take your time and find something that you can strike back with."
He says he is influenced by actors such as Sean Penn, Dustin Hoffman, Marlon Brando and Tom Hardy, while Ahmed also cites Daniel Day-Lewis, the three-time Oscar-winner, whose brilliantly honed performances became increasingly rare in the latter years of his career. "When he makes a movie, what happens? Everybody goes, 'Oh, he makes a movie,'" he says. When it is suggested that such restraint is all too rare in film, he replies: "You don't want to be the guy who appears every year."
Musk opens in cinemas across the UAE on Thursday, August 29
