In the phenomenal rarity that goes by the title of Dum Mastam, a boy (Imran Ashraf) is head over heels in love with a girl (Amar Khan), who, maybe, likes him, but surely doesn’t love him.

By the norms of filmmaking, you know what to expect: after a cycle of dramatic high-points, the girl will eventually fall in love with the boy, they will hug, and all will be hunky-dory in the world.

Alas, this is not that film — yet, at the same time, this is exactly that film.

Confused? Let me elaborate:

I Am Your Bleeding Heart, Hear Me Roar!

Bao is an unsophisticated, loveable, lout — a pig-headed, tough-as-nails street brawler who slacks through life, but loves his dad (Sohail Ahmed, perfectly cast), his guitar and the sound of himself singing (he is quite good at it too).

Bao is a man who loves to love, for the sake of love — it is his default persona, we realise — but the love he has for Aliya, his next-door neighbour since childhood, overwhelms everything else, including his rationality…which, we also realise, he has a short supply of anyways.

Bao loves Aliya so much that should she tell him to stop breathing, he would, for as long as it would be possible for him, to hold his breath. Once he wheezes back to life, he will immediately get into a counter-argument about breathing with her, clash in the most childlike way possible, and then leave on his bike (which he also loves, by the way), only to willfully forget that they ever fought.

When the film begins, and you first see their row, you realise that they’ve been tumbling in this never-ending circle since forever.

Aliya is his best chum. They hang out, go to the movies, and he gives her a ride to college every day, where she secretly practises dancing. Like any stubborn, ambitious girl with stars in her eyes, she lies to her parents about college, and what she wants to be (Saifee Hasan, always a talented and understated actor, plays her staunch father).

Aliya knows that Bao is in desperate love with her — how can she not: he is vehement and borderline obnoxious in his showboat-y affirmations of love (he has a flair for theatricality). She, however, can’t feel the attraction.

These emotions — the differing states of love and lovelessness of two individuals — are the gist of Dum Mastam. The film is not about the pursuit of superstardom, as the trailers would lead you to believe; this is a love and hate story — one where the viewer can’t choose sides.

By superficial measure, we could label this as a one-line story. You see and understand who Bao and Aliya are in the first frame of the film, feel their disparate angsts and conflicts by the middle act of the film, and then, by the heart-wrenching climax, witness the culmination of this emotionally devastating affair of the heart.

The film is painful, in the best sense of the word, because great drama needs great characters and greater conflict. In Pakistani cinema, both aspects qualify as endangered species.

Dum Mastam’s writer — and female lead — Amar Khan is a rarity like her film; one wonders where she was, both as an actress and a writer, since domestic cinema started taking itself seriously in 2013.

Amar’s screenplay is judiciously plotted, armed with a well-stocked supply of conflicts that are carefully placed at the right junctures. The scenes she writes are intelligently structured, adhering to the advanced rules of screenwriting far better than some Oscar contenders of this year. One realises the meticulousness of her screenwriting ability, even when the film begins its somewhat long-winded second-act, where people might stifle a yawn or two.

After the brilliant intermission (Pakistani screenwriters should learn how to do intermissions from this film), one begins to wonder where the story will eventually lead to — even though you know exactly where it is going.

The twists the film introduces aren’t new-fangled by any stretch of the imagination. Yet when and how they happen, they catch you off-guard.

Amar is not just technically aware of the theories of screenwriting; as a dialogue writer, she is almost the equal of Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar. Her words have the tone, rhythm and the necessary restraint that is required of cinema. Her characters do not go overboard into long flowery dictions, nor do they love the sound of their voice. They say their due in the most effective and concise phraseology as possible and go their ways.

Amar’s definitions — whether they be of characters or scenes — are as perceptive as first-time film producers Adnan Siddiqui and Akhtar Hasnain’s eye for quality and detail, and director Mohammad Ehteshamuddin’s eye for filmmaking.

Clearly 10 notches above Superstar, Ehtesham’s last endeavour, with Dum Mastam one sees the director flexing his newfound sense of camera movement.

In the first-half, we see Ehtesham in a state of rush. His camera (under the hand of cinematographer Salman Razzaq), pushes in on the characters in every scene and, when it is not inching closer, it moves about vertically on the set as extras mingle to-and-fro between the foreground and the background. The sense of depth and composition is overwhelming at times, yet this creative choice serves a purpose: it shows the physical chaos in Bao and Aliya’s lives in the pre-intermission half.

At this point, Aliya is training to be the star performer, who will likely get noticed soon (Adnan makes his cameo as a concert manager who is on the lookout for the next superstar).

Bao, himself an artist, is vaguely jealous of Aliya’s upcoming rise. Soon, their paths lead to the film’s supporting cast of characters: a music sensation and all-round contemptible person (Momin Saqib), his producer (Adnan Shah Tipu), and the stage-manager (Saleem Mairaj), who is running the production Aliya is starring in.

These characters are essential necessities, whose individual plights and insecurities give them dimension. However, in the broad concept of the film, they mean nothing.

One of the eventualities after Dum Mastam’s release is the instantaneous proclamation of Imran Ashraf as a superstar. Understandably, any lead actor who plays an overzealous character with an exaggerated body language and a magnetic allure for the camera will be applauded by critics and audiences alike as the next big thing. What reviewers may likely miss are Imran’s nuances between the exaggeration.

Take for example Imran’s navigation of emotions and the visible shift of weight in his performance when Bao is with Aliya; especially note the sequences where the two fight, and how Bao’s tone drops to an indignant whisper when he pushes his pain inwards. In one dramatic fight late in the film, he shaves his head in anguish, because he can’t fathom retaliating against Aliya. (FYI: Imran shaved his head for real in this scene; it will get talked about a lot).

Imran plays Bao with a multi-layered approach, flaring up and then doubling down his performance within a span of beats. You can see that his stagey outwardness is augmented by carefully gauged gradations.

Amar’s performance is just as understated and dynamic. In fact, it is Aliya who walks a spectacular path of self-realisation and despair that eventually changes who she is.

Bao, despite becoming a sensational superstar (as seen in the trailer), never actually changes. All he wants is love in return and, being his pig-headed self, he demands that love to be genuine, and stark-raving mad, like his own.

In his naiveness, Bao doesn’t realise that one cannot command someone else’s heart to love, no matter how much one bickers and roars. Seeing his heart’s destruction is perhaps the best two-and-a-half-hours you can spend in a movie theatre.

Released by Hum Films, Dum Mastam is a stunning first production by Adnan Siddiqui and Akhtar Hasnain, featuring a soundtrack by Azaan Sami, Shani Arshad, Bilal Saeed, Shiraz Uppal and Nabeel Shaukat.

Published in Dawn, ICON, May 8th, 2022