Finally..after 4 years of toiling across Pakistan thru all those noisy and dusty markets, I got my hands on a copy of Inteha(1999), which marked Samina Peerzada’s debut as a director. The print being a bootleg copy was terrible, but that didnt detract me from enjoying this film.
I’d heard so much about this movie from so many people, mostly a lot of positive stuff and some even had suggested that this was possibly one of the best movies made in recent times in this part of the world. And I really dont have much to disagree about.
It was a story told with song and dance combined but with a healthy dose of realism - the movie extremely accurately depicts what goes on in the Pakistani high society and its’s interactions with our bourgeois.
The story goes like this: Sara, an Art student studying in Lahore falls in love wiith a college mate who happens to be a photographer, but this son of a feudal bigshot who happens to be Sara’s cousin is all to obsessed with her. After giving this Zafar dude all the go-away-signals, thing eventually take a turn where Sara has to marry Zafar. What follows is intense, intense cinema.
I could very well relate to the characters of Zafar (Humayun Saeed), the arrogant son of the bigshot, or Sara(Meera), the art student with the romantic inclination. You see them all around you in our society.
The characters were so sensibly portrayed by the actors, so sensitively put across in the script, and more over portrayed with a great deal of realism by the director. The movie focuses on marital rape, and you really do begin to feel sympathetic for the woman who this is being done to - its just all too naturally flowing with logic, all too real.
The music, the stylish choreography was all too good to be seen in a movie with a rock solid script. Other than the technical flaws, which were beyond the director’s control, this movie is first rate cinema, deserving to be enjoyed by a far more wider audience and that on much better print!
The movie is proof enough that we have pretty good resources interms of music, script writing and set/costume designing Pakistan that can be utilised to make a good movie. Indian songs and swiss alps are just plain shortcuts.
Miss Peerzada, When and where do I get my Original Inteha DVD???