‘In Flames’ Movie Ending Explained: How Do The Women Overcome Their Trauma?

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that whatever little the world knows of Pakistan is based on the assumption that the country and its populace are only moments away from backsliding into their perpetual state of extremism and terrorism. This, of course, is a heavily charged ideological pattern of thought, for there can be no country that willingly stays in a morass of fear and trauma without ever desiring its share of the sweetness of living. To the world, Pakistan is weighed in terms of its stuffy pieties and the victimhood of its women. While none of these critiques can be entirely dismissed, and very rightfully so, in the face of the thrust of hate-mongering that the West driven media propagates, we rarely get stories of the spirit of humanity that runs through the veins of Pakistan. My point is not to counter the truth of the experience that the people of Pakistan have faced at the hands of its socio-cultural institutions. Despite never being even remotely associated with the country, I am simply asserting that it cannot be the only truth for them. 

Canadian-Pakistani writer/director Zarrar Kahn’s In Flames is a detailed exploration of the horrors of living in Pakistan for its women. However, to me, what comes across as the larger and freer expression is the women’s determination to not live within the boundary that has been delineated by horror. If Pakistan lives in its horrors, it also knows its way out of it. Through their myriad everyday expressions and gestures, the women uphold their ideals of potential liberation. 

Spoilers Ahead


What happens in the film?

Mariyam is a young medical student who lives in a small flat in Karachi with her mother and her brother. After the death of Mariyam’s grandfather and without any living patriarch, the familial vultures start circling above the little economic assurance they possess. In fact, somewhere at the one-hour mark of In Flames, there is a visual parallel made with a bird’s-eye view shot of the rooftop of Mariyam’s apartment. With screeching birds hovering overhead and power-hungry men waiting to pounce on the ground, Mariyam and her family still have some life left in them before they can be scavenged. 

The men of Karachi seem to have all grown malevolent omniscience regarding the girl’s vulnerabilities. They swarm across Mariyam’s house and even try to break into her car and steal it. She does form a friendship with one, a boy called Asad, which eventually blossoms into a romance. The couple’s elopement to a beach, even if idyllic, turns the tables on them. On this trip, Mariya gets a glimpse of a shifting, ghostly figure of a man. The romance between the two turns out to be short-lived and is interrupted by Asad’s sudden and horrific death. However, Mariyam’s constant guilt-ridden mind fears that the romance might not have ended at all. Her mother, Fariha, too has been sweet-talked into forgoing her father’s belongings. Following this traumatic loss of her lover, Mariyam is debilitated by violent seizures. She is advised by her relative to go to a faith healer. 


Why do the ghosts of the men haunt Mariyam?

When the whitish-eyed demonic men start buzzing around Mariyam, it is understandable why these men, some of them at least, are shown to be ghosts. The ghostly man that Mariyam spots at the beach in a safari suit is the same man that Fariha spots after her awkward meeting with her new lawyer. It is Mariyam’s father and Fariha’s husband. We realize later that there was an episode of domestic violence that Mariyam had witnessed as a young teen. Therefore, her father is a ghostly figure who is visible to both the women, as both have shared trauma because of him. It is pertinent to note that Mariyam’s deceased grandfather never made an appearance as a ghost. The cue is hidden in the dialogue. In conversations between Uncle Nasir and Fariha, the former constantly complains about his deceased brother’s morally upright nature. It is a hint for us to deduce that the grandfather was perhaps the only male figure who was not a trauma agent. The women were simply dependent on the elderly patriarch. That speaks volumes about the painful reality of the women of the country. 


The relationship between Mariyam and Fariha

The idea in this essay is not to simply break down the horrors and a metaphorical meaning-making of the blur between what is real and unreal. The complexities of the human psyche and its beleaguered state following a major trauma have been used as a foundation for several horror stories. Therefore, Maryam’s repeated entry into the site of her trauma (the beach), even if she is just opening her bedroom door, is not what I choose to elaborate upon. I would like to take that time instead to explore how women become both the harbingers of cultural trauma and the antidote to it. 

In her memoir titled, “Riffat’s Diary,” Pakistani historian Taymiya R Zaman broaches the cultural truth that a mother is the primary source of all knowledge for her daughter. To put it simply, the daughter learns her first lessons of personal conduct and moral strictures from her mother. Mariyam imbibes her mother’s way of tolerating abuse and making peace with her trauma, even if clumsily. She falters at it and lets it fester in her mind but does not ask for help, just like her mother. In the end, it is the mother whose instinct communicates to her that all might not be well with her daughter. Sensing her daughter spiraling down, Fariha shares her knowledge on overcoming trauma, which she grasped following her husband’s death. The mother figure becomes a looming threat to the demonic men, especially Asad. 

While Fariha’s knowledge of raising her daughter in a Pakistani household undeniably makes a victim out of her daughter, the shared womanhood of the mother and daughter becomes a solution to that victimhood. In the end, the women do not find themselves sinking into a life of despair. In contrast, the women regain their voices, their identity, and a new knowledge of dealing with the wolfish men, now more vigorously than ever. Therefore, it comes across as a hopeful story of resilience.


Damayanti Ghosh
Damayanti Ghoshhttps://letterboxd.com/deemem/
Damayanti is a Master of Arts in Film Studies from Jadavpur University. An inveterate admirer of the Hindi popular cinema, she takes equal pleasure in unearthing obscure animation and horror but does not let on much about it. Her favorite book is 'The Motorcycle Diaries'. Her favorite film is 'Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa'.


 

 

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