The film’s director and screenwriter, Blessy, deliberately exaggerated the cruelty of the Saudi sponsor, and his film “Goat’s Life” worked in a traditional Indian style. For example, the location of the events, according to the novel, is a farm, an oasis crowded with trees and their shadows, but the director depicted it for the viewer as a barren land with no trees in it in order to exaggerate the harshness of Najib’s circumstances. Moreover, the three shepherds could have escaped on the backs of camels after stocking up on water for the road, all of which were at their disposal in the absence of the sponsor and his men on the occasion of his daughter’s wedding, instead of walking barefoot and thirsty on hot sand.
In order to break these melodramatic scenes, the director showed flashbacks from Najeeb’s life and his relationship with his wife in their village in India, and a review of the green environment and the river.
The director also sought to highlight scenes of the harshness of nature and elicit the emotions and feelings of the viewer to gain the sympathy of the Indian audience and achieve the highest profits in India.
Since its release on Netflix and translated into Arabic, the movie “Goat Life” has caused a wide uproar on social media, due to its story that angered many, especially Saudis, because of the events it deals with, which they described as offensive to them due to the sponsorship system.
The sponsorship system in Saudi Arabia is known as the fact that an employer brings a worker and is his sponsor and responsible for him, his residence and all his details.
Knowing that the movie will cause controversy and perhaps problems with the Saudi authorities, the director put a note in the introduction to the movie saying that “the movie does not intend to offend any country, people, society or race.”
However, the Indian film sparked a wave of controversy among critics and Gulf social media users, between those who objected to the way the idea of โโthe sponsorship system in Saudi Arabia was presented, and others who saw it as a creative work that falls under the title of freedom of creativity and does not express reality. In addition to the film’s criticism of the Saudi sponsorship system, the film sparked widespread objections regarding what was described as an insult to Arabs in general, and to the character of the Saudi Bedouin man, who was portrayed as “greedy, cruel, stingy, fraudulent and dirty”, as “Najeeb” describes his sponsor, played by Al-Balushi, in one scene as a man “who has not touched water for years, stinking and bathing in his urine and sweat”, which was described as an offensive stereotype of Bedouins and Arabs in general, and sparked criticism of Al-Balushi himself and his acceptance of the “offensive role”. Some people wrote on social media criticizing the “dirty” Indian societies, which are plagued by deadly epidemics and do not have even a modicum of cleanliness. They also criticized the way the rich Indians themselves treat their poor citizens, whom they view as slaves. A Saudi activist justified the behavior of a sheep owner in the desert in this way, in which he treated an Indian worker, by saying that it may be a purely individual behavior that should not be generalized as it happens in any other society. However, there are thousands of Indians who live in prosperity in the Kingdom, most of whom are university professors, doctors, engineers and workers. He described the film as “just an Indian whirlwind flying with the sands of the Saudi desert.”
