Water has a curiously diverse, symbolic representation in cinema. Depending on the circumstances of the story, water cleanses souls, closes chapters of life, becomes an intermediary medium for rebirth or salvation — and if unleashed in big-budget disaster films, delivers a decree of death and devastation.

In the Sakina Samo-produced and directed Intezaar (aka Waiting), water has been delegated a far graver context: a forlorn anticipation of death within the perceived stillness of time.

Let that thought sink in for a minute because the characters in Intezaar do that a lot; they wait.

In the film, Ruby (Kaif Ghaznavi) and her mother (Samina Ahmed, excellent) often stand in front of a calm lake, far away from the blaring bustles of the city. For Ruby, it is not a moment of calm and reflection; rather it is a time of joyless contemplation of unrelieved, exhausting toils.

Ruby, a 40-something divorced mom whose teenage boy is living in America, has been taking care of her father (Khalid Ahmed) and mother for years now…and she has had enough.

Director Sakina Samo does a great job severing both drama and emotions in Intezaar

Loathing her life and grudging through the forever-looping mediocrity of her existence — she waters the garden, carries quarter-filled buckets of water, and changes her mother’s clothes — Ruby is her parents’ reluctant caregiver, looking for an escape.

Like the title of a very popular episode of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, Five Characters in Search of an Exit, every character in screenwriter Bee Gul’s screenplay is in search of an exit. Some in more literal terms than others.

Alzheimer and cancer are swiftly eating away her mother’s brain and body. Her father, meanwhile, is just old. Ruby’s only way out, she postulates, is when her parents die, the house is sold off and she returns to her boy in the US.

No matter how hard she wills death to visit the house, the grim reaper is taking its sweet time coming — and when you think about it, is death really the way out for Ruby? Writer Bee Gul’s screenplay leaves that answer at the mercy of the audience’s conclusion.

She — and for that matter Sakina Samo — shouldn’t have because of one key reason: Ruby.

Perpetually peeved and easily provoked, Ruby’s continuous state of anger and disgruntlement come from a mix of self-woes and inner bitterness. Droning through life, sitting idly with her laptop, harbouring romantic inclinations at her mother’s male nurse (Raza Ali Abid), she chooses to not look for a way to fight out of her predicament. Placing herself in a subservient position, her confidence all but stricken away by circumstances, she is an angry mouse in a maze.

The only one who is remotely in Ruby’s radar of wrath is her father, whose astringent retaliation gives her momentary distraction. Her father wasn’t a just, caring man in his youth, especially towards his wife, something that Ruby bitingly reminds him at every opportunity…when she isn’t wishing for their deaths.

The mother, though, does not remember much of her past or the present. She thinks that she is living in an old home and that Ruby’s older brother, Sameer (Adnan Jaffar), calls her twice a day from the US. Sameer hasn’t returned home in the last 15 years nor called in months, but he sends money, as if paying off a lifelong installment of mortgage.

When not talking about Sameer, her mother fiddles with yarn, complains about the coughing man in the other room (it is her husband, whom she doesn’t remember) or asks who Ruby is, and whether she has any children of her own?

Every conversation with mom stabs through Ruby, but one can see that the two were close. There is a kindness in the way she handles her mother, yet that does not alter the fact that Ruby has had enough.

When a doctor (Samo in cameo) informs Ruby that her mother’s condition is critical, rather than be devastated she asks whether her mother will pass away before the Easter holidays. “The plane tickets to the US are expensive during Easter holidays,” she insensitively blurts out. The wait is excruciating, but the joy she gets from the news is hard to dismiss.

Despite the realistic depiction of family turmoil (we’ve all probably seen families like this), Samo takes an impassive and distant approach to the narrative. There are some relevant creative calls — the house and the repetition of rooms and conversation and the unmoving static camera placements all add to the claustrophobia the characters are living through — however, the story’s biggest impediment remains to be Ruby.

Supposedly the anchor of the story, Ruby comes off as an insensitive, immature woman whose preoccupation with her self-woes gets on your nerves, and loses the connection with the viewers.

Perhaps this creative call to enforce a disconnect was deliberate — and if that is really the case, Samo did a great job severing both drama and emotions from the story.

We understand these characters’ plight, and at times even laugh at their decisions (a late twist in the tale is quite novel and elevates the story), but other than nodding a head in acknowledgement, there is little, we as audience can do. We can’t applaud, because there is little to applaud about. Our best bet is to let Ruby wait her life out, looking at the still waters that neither cleanse nor give solace.

Released by Distribution Club, Intezaar was playing in cinemas at the time of this review’s writing

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 28th, 2022