Despite his civilised looks, Haris Qadeer (Ibad Alam Sher) has an animal within him — a primate secured to the radius of a semi-tight leash who happily, nay enthusiastically, dances to the beat of his tamer.

The analogy is fixed hard into the audience’s memory by co-writer/director Seraj Us Salikin when Madaari opens to the beat of a monkey-master’s dug-duggi (pellet drum), and the camera slowly refocuses on a close-shot of an innocent monkey’s wide-eyed face.

“Oy, you. Sit down!” the perspiration-soaked monkey-master orders the primate. “You won’t sit?” he says a tad disappointed, and then gently tugs the animal’s leash, so that it conforms to its practised drills.

“Monkey, sit down. Very good. Gentleman. Tension not. Good morning,” he exclaims in automatic rhythm, almost as if he, himself, is taught to do that by his own masters (it is another of Salikin’s parallels, as we’ll learn later in the story).

Seraj Us Salikin’s Madaari contains what Pakistani cinema desperately needs to survive — ambition, initiative, conviction and a bit of rebellion

The monkey complies, as does Haris — who giddily mimics the animal’s clowning acrobatics. The way the two appear metaphorically and literally linked — their ultimate destinies controlled by pre-ordained circumstances of life and human masters.

Madaari, though, is not a tale of thwarting fate’s grand designs; it is a sorrowful story of succumbing to it.

Haris, a good-for-nothing youngster with a matriculation degree, is open to the prospect of a day job. He even finds work as an office assistant for 10,000 rupees a month (the story is set in the late ’90s so the amount is respectable for a lower-middle class family). However — without giving away spoilers — we learn that fate has other plans.

Even his white-collar employment yanks the youngster back to his dark, inescapable reality: the alleyways of seething revenge, raging anger and bad company.

See, despite his good intentions, Haris is a hoodlum-in-training. During the day, he ruins neighbourhood walls by plastering posters of the Nayi Awaaz Party (NAP), a regional political party targeting the Urdu-speaking youth of Karachi for votes, and then vrooms around the city on his bike, flapping the party’s flag over his head as if he is on a victory lap. At night, he and his narrow-minded party-fanatic cohort, Asif Baloch (Hammad Siddiq), rob people.

One of these successful robberies bites Haris in the behind. The robbed man turns out to be an acquaintance of his paternal uncle Ali Qadeer (Paras Masroor), a seemingly straightforward father figure who often wears a prayer cap — the insignia of a pious man.

Ali commandeers Haris’ gun that was loaned by NAP’s main henchman (the party needs funding, so the common man becomes the target in more ways than one).

The uncle’s growling intervention works, despite Haris’ rebellious nature — as it does in most non-fictional lower-middle class families. Eventually, Ali and his wife try to tie Haris down with marriage — a prospect he warms up to — but given his reputation and the tendencies for sudden outbursts, that’s easier said than done. One of the few options Haris gets is a widow with an eight-year-old son.

These subplots interject with Haris’ revenge story. Years ago, a man had barged into their home and killed his father (Ali Rizvi, also the co-screenwriter of the film), a political hopeful. Scarred by his dad’s death, Haris eventually faces off with the killer. Technically, this simplistic reason for revenge should suffice — yet it doesn’t.

Salikin and Rizvi’s screenplay is stringent on narrative form and convention, but floppy in Haris’ character development. He is aimless by design, but even then one should be able to figure out the reason for his apparent madness, or sudden shifts in decision-making. The rest of the characters, be they Ali Qadeer or Asif Baloch, are quite well-rounded — and perform just as brilliantly.

Hammad Siddiq plays an accent-heavy native from a version of Lyari, and has been cast with an eye for stereotypical play-acting; he is fine, but nothing spectacular. Paras Masroor, however, elevates what could have been a straightforward performance with exceptional depth, gravity, nuance and control.

The hero of the film, other than Salikin, is Ibad Alam Sher — an actor so hungry for breaking through that he devours the camera, lens and all.

This young Napa graduate has beaten Haris’ entire being into his inner depths; what we see is not Ibad acting as Haris but rather Haris himself: an indecisive youth who can be just as unbridled and savage.

Take for instance his unashamed, unadulterated mimicry of the monkey that was jumping to the beat of its master — first seen in Madaari’s establishing frames, and then later revisited twice when Haris plays King Kong with his teenage cousin (Rafay Sarhadi).

The performance is visually arresting and brimming with subtext. His aping functions as his little corner of freedom that allows him a cathartic moment to release his pent-up rage against the system, circumstance and life. It is in these moments that we also realise that he is a man reigned in by everything and everyone, whose animalistic nature can go berserk at any given moment.

Although a tad lacking in his voice’s tonal quality and tenor, if Ibad’s Haris doesn’t get recognised by nominations and awards this year, the snub would yell volumes about the intellectual acumen of our juries.

Second to none is Madaari’s production design, cinematography and editing.

The film is lit with naturalistic ambience while the camera is lensed and blocked at the appropriate angles befitting the nature and tone of the shots (the cinematography is by Musab Akhtar and Ammar-ul-Haq).

These technically backed creative calls, pulled off by a crew and cast largely made up of film graduates from Pakistan, define the will and conviction of indie cinema.

The makers of Madaari provide a case-study of why limitedness of budget and shooting schedules are never excuses to deliver a compromised motion picture (the film was mostly shot with Blackmagic’s Pocket Cinema Camera — a cost-effective camera looked down on for film production in Pakistan, yet used to intercut near-seamlessly with the uber-expensive Arri Alexa worldwide).

For all the checkboxes Madaari ticks off, some seem to be overlooked by Salikin and Ali.

Sticking inflexibly to narrative conventions and motives, the story doesn’t give Haris likeability. From what we see, right until the climax, he is a lost youth who cannot — and at times will not — break out of the rut, even at moments when the story desperately needs him to.

Also: the film’s high-points aren’t that high and the climax, which does gradually reach momentum, falters ineffectively.

While we’re shown that Haris’ revenge means everything for him, his drive is all but relegated to the background after a key twist near the end of the first act. When the story returns Haris to his purpose, one feels that neither the cause nor the intention is there anymore.

A slight polish of the screenplay and some reshuffle of scenes could have taken care of these minor lapses.

However, the plusses overpower the minuses by far.

Madaari is a by-product of the youth of Pakistani cinema whose young blood burns with ambition, initiative, conviction and a bit of rebellion.

Unlike Haris and his shackles, which ultimately take him to a place of calm, docile subjugation and compromise, Salikin and Co. will not take no for an answer. Their film is intelligently crafted and untainted by the crippling demands of networks and distributors.

And that, dear readers, is the very passion, belief and intellect Pakistani cinema desperately needs to survive.

Self-released by producers Seraj Us Salikin, Ali Rizvi and Ammar Alee Danish, Madaari is rated U. The film is appropriate for all ages, despite its intense themes. The film is playing in cinemas from Eid-ul-Azha

Published in Dawn, ICON, June 25th, 2023