Aik Tamanna La’Hasil

Pak­istan has got­ten its first ever neo-noir film in the shape of Salman Shahid-star­ring “Taman­na”, which has been direct­ed by British direc­tor, Steven Moore, and pro­duced by Con­cor­dia Pro­duc­tions (PVT) Lim­it­ed, which has on board an old Shoaib Man­soor col­lab­o­ra­tor (Khu­da Kay Liye), Sarah Tareen.

Taman­na is the sto­ry of a seem­ing­ly art­less young man, Riz Ahmed (Omair Rana), who falls in love with the young actress-wife (Mehreen Raheel) of the wealthy, Whiskey-drink­ing, cock­tail-lov­ing, pur­port­ed film indus­try big­wig, Mian Tariq Ali (Salman Shahid). Ahmed push­es his luck a tad bit too far, and goes to talk to Ali to plead his love, and the latter’s back­ing off. How­ev­er, Ali pro­pos­es that in order to take his wife in mar­riage Ahmed must steal some pre­cious jew­els that the for­mer had brought a while ago. Thus begins a top­sy-turvy tale of dark and humor­ous series of decep­tions and counter-decep­tions, and plots fis­sion­ing into a grow­ing num­ber of myr­i­ad schemes and increas­ing­ly com­plex (read: con­fus­ing) nar­ra­tives. And as all the may­hem unfolds, we find Fer­yal Gauhar in cameo-like cuts watch­ing the Ahmed-Ali mad­ness through the secu­ri­ty cam­era feed of Ali’s man­sion.

The film is a for-screen, con­tex­tu­al­ized-in-Lahore adap­ta­tion of clas­sic British stage play “Sleuth” by Antho­ny Shaf­fer. It strad­dles the two realms of thriller and mur­der mys­tery, and dark humor, and seeks to present itself as an intrigu­ing (empha­sis added) tale of crime, love, jeal­ousy, infi­deli­ty, thirst for wealth and, even­tu­al­ly, decep­tion. It tries also to address ques­tions of class snob­bery and ego. How­ev­er, Taman­na is a poor adap­ta­tion of the clas­sic. I had added empha­sis on the word “intrigu­ing” because the movie is intrigu­ing, and noth­ing but intrigu­ing, and a lit­tle too intrigu­ing for its own good – it intrigues one’s mind into won­der­ing what were the film’s mak­ers think­ing when they came up with the sto­ry line that their view­ers now have to go through the agony of bear­ing. The sto­ry is so con­vo­lut­ed and so com­plex (and not in a good way – com­plex like an extreme­ly-entan­gled-iPod-head­phones-com­plex) that the film mak­ers them­selves seem at a com­plete loss to make sense of what they start­ed out to do, and where they had come.

The film drags for vast extents of its run­ning time, bores the audi­ences, con­fus­es them, presents poor­ly thought out, indeed idi­ot­ic, buf­fooner­ies in the name of “plot twists”, turns into a hec­tor­ing mono­logue at one point, resorts to odd­ball shenani­gans best suit­ed for a short film made for a col­lege semes­ter-final sub­mis­sion, and, in the end, frankly, it does not even turn out to be very fun­ny. Its edit­ing is poor. Its first ten min­utes are so poor­ly edit­ed, they bear down on one’s eyes like a South Amer­i­can mil­i­tary regime’s tyran­ny! The film is also rid­dled with con­ti­nu­ity issues, with clear breaks in sequences, and goof-ups.

All, how­ev­er, is not bad with “Taman­na”. Salman Shahid deliv­ers a stel­lar per­for­mance. Here’s a man who stands out in the film as a class apart – he’s the engine that dri­ves “Taman­na”, the wheels on which it rolls, and the oil that keeps its nuts and bolts in order. Omair Rana is enter­tain­ing and offers some sense of promise in an indus­try that has been for long on the wane. Mehreen Raheel’s per­for­mance is alright, though one would expect a lit­tle some­thing more from her.

Tra­di­tion­al song-and-dance sequences remain con­spic­u­ous by their absence, in a refresh­ing break from Lol­ly­wood cus­tom, and Bol­ly­wood stan­dard fare. How­ev­er, what comes across as the most strik­ing – the “breath of fresh air” offer­ing of “Taman­na” in a G.T. Road-ply­ing-wag­on-like stuffy, stal­e­ness of usu­al cin­e­ma of Pak­istan – is that “Taman­na” steers clear of the done-to-death romance genre, and the much-in-vogue pol­i­tics and reli­gious extrem­ism band­wag­on, and brings class and social issues (how­ev­er poor­ly exe­cut­ed) to the sil­ver screen.

A spe­cial word ought to be put in for the film’s direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy, who, at places, has han­dled his job par­tic­u­lar­ly well, exe­cut­ing some aes­thet­i­cal­ly very pleas­ing shots. The film has a good score, win­ning an award for its Rahet Fateh Ali Khan song at the Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val.

In the final analy­sis, the film is a drag and a bag of con­fu­sion. How­ev­er, it needs to be appre­ci­at­ed for Salman Shahid and Omair Rana’s per­for­mances and its break from tra­di­tion­al gen­res to attempt to give Pak­istani audi­ences some­thing new to chew on (one would wish the attempt had been suc­cess­ful as well). The film is rather short and poor­ly made for the sil­ver screen, for rea­sons elu­ci­dat­ed else­where. Per­haps, it should have been made into a stage play, or a tele­film, or even a dra­ma ser­i­al. One feels hes­i­tant in rec­om­mend­ing the film to his read­ers, even though one real­izes that cin­e­ma needs more pub­lic sup­port to remain afloat, and even­tu­al­ly shoot into the 21st cen­tu­ry as a suc­cess­ful indus­try, doff­ing both its Maula-Jutt over­hang and Gan­dasa cul­ture moor­ings. Go watch this movie if you must, and if but to sup­port the fledg­ling cin­e­ma, but keep no expec­ta­tions. Pay for your the­ater tick­et, and think of it as char­i­ty.