With critics raving endlessly about KAMLI, it is important to objectively point out the flaws in the film and imagine what it possibly could have been. Just because Pakistani cinema has a long way to go in terms of script and narrative, that certainly does not mean that the first risque, cinematographically poetic, or off-beat film to hit the screens this year deserves blind praise and no criticism. Spoiler alert for those who have not seen the film, this review is deliberately being published much after the film’s release.
Let’s begin with what works well in Sarmad Khoosat’s Kamli: the location and setting, based in Soon Valley is authentic, breathtakingly beautiful and deftly captured on camera. Saba Qamar, leading the film as the demure Hina, is engaging to watch. The music is refreshing and pools together adroit singers (Reshma, Atif Aslam, Zeb Bangash, Zenab Fatimah Sultan), poetic song writers (Bulleh Shah, Shakeel Sohail, Anjum Qureshi, Sohail Shahzad and Izaat Majeed) as well as gifted composers (Zulfiqar Ali, Saad Sultan, Sohail Shahzad and Izzat Majeed). However, soon after the first mysteriously intriguing song, Paani, the film nosedives and does not make much sense, neither does it deliver what the director claims.
The film is replete with toxic relationships and romanticizes suicide. Hina (Saba Qamar) is an abandoned wife who lives with her visually impaired sister-in-law Sakina (Sania Saeed) who micromanages her (Hina), constantly suspects her, lies to her, attacks her and baselessly shames her for having an affair with her employer’s husband. The film tries to talk about a woman’s desire but ends on a disastrous note with the protagonist committing suicide, which is dangerously made to look poetic and beautiful as Hina drowns herself in a pool of water replete with picture-perfect flowers, just because she realizes that the man she fell in love with was a figment of her imagination.
On the other hand, Zeenat (Nimra Bucha) is an affluent, seemingly educated, alcoholic painter who uses Hina as her muse for paintings and then tries to get her married to her aged husband (Omair Rana), just so she can produce a kid for the couple (since Zeenat cannot have kids). She drinks alcohol at night and, during the day hosts a religious dars in which she invites an aalima (Samia Mumtaz) to give a sermon on how women must be married off as soon as possible to be tamed, become izzatdaar and not become ‘baaghi’. She then preaches what abandoned wives should do to redeem themselves according to Islam. As if Zeenat, wanting her husband to marry an economically inferior woman, only to render her as a child-bearing machine, without her consent (she does not even seek her husband’s consent) was not hypocritical enough?
The film could have been a magical fairy tale where Sakina was shown to be jealous, possessive and mildly attracted to Hina as her sole companion and could have ended with Hina burning down the house which has shackled her for over eight years as she runs off with Amaltas (Hamza Khwaja), a lover who only comes alive from her vivid imagination: and the audience would never have to know. Sadly, the film achieves no such empowering narrative and has Hina return to the toxic household into the lap of her abuser, Sakina, before she kills herself listening to a fairytale she tried to embody and live.
Critics and reviewers have taken it upon themselves to deem this story about three women with mental illnesses, floating dangerous medical terms like ‘bipolar disorder’, ‘schizophrenia’, and ‘alcoholism’ with no concrete basis, not leaving any substance for the women in this story to work with. The element of magical realism is only alive through incredible framing and cinematography by Awais Gohar, a name that seems to have been camouflaged behind the spotlight garnered by the cast and director. Credit where it is due: kudos to the production designer - Kanwal Khoosat, and art directors - Iram Sana and Majyd Bayg, costume designer Usama Khan Jallandhar and sound designers Ashar Khalid and Kashif Ejaz for creating an immersive world in the film, which is as authentic as Soon Valley and its inhabitants.
It is one thing to rave about a film as a cinephile, but completely ignoring its blatant imperfections and not critiquing it for its flawed narrative as a critic would make one question the objectivity of any review.
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