In Flames Burns Bright
In Flames, written and directed by Zarrar Kahnset, is an intimate ghost story that uses deep-seated familial and cultural power dynamics to shape its unexpectedly hopeful narrative.
Set in modern-day Pakistan, In Flames focuses on the strained relationship between Mariam (Ramesha Nawal) and her mother Fariha (Bakhtawar Mazhar) following the death of Fariha’s father. The two women must wrestle with the misogyny of their society and their own opposing ways of dealing with it as they struggle to keep their suddenly-vulnerable family together.
But forces both mundane and supernatural conspire against them
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Mariam, a medical student, is smart, independent, and slightly rebellious. She lives within the strictures of her society but pushes back whenever she can. Often she is pushing back against her mother, a widow who believes they must now rely on Fariha’s Uncle Nasir (Adnan Shah Tipu) as the new family patriarch.
But Nasir betrays them financially, and Mariam’s boyfriend (Omar Javaid) dies in a tragic accident. While Fariha tries with increasing desperation to secure legal protection for them, Mariam finds herself haunted by the ghosts of her grandfather and her lover. She suffers through depression and violent nightmares. The family’s fragile stability begins to fall apart.
In a finely balanced counterpoint to her daughter’s unravelling, Fariha grows slowly stronger under duress. She also begins to see ghosts–but for her they are a call to action, not a reprimand.
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In Flames is visually arresting, its flowing scenes often dominated by a single color. Interiors are shadowy and dim, the edges blurred. There is a stark contrast between the hard, angular city the women navigate and the soft spaces inside their home. Mariam is also wrapped in soft layers, echoing the dreamy visions she begins to experience as her life becomes harder, and her world becomes smaller and smaller as the hauntings increase.
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In the end the ghosts in In Flames are not the real threat–it is the repression and expectations of a strict, patriarchal society that are the real monsters in the shadows. When the film reaches its startling climax it is not a twist so much as a long-delayed reclamation of female power. I recommend it.