When Choices Become Cages — The Many Layers of Three
Some films dazzle and entertain, while others leave a lingering impact after the credits roll. Three —the 2009 psychological drama featuring Nauman Ijaz, Resham, and Adeel Hashmi– belongs to the latter category. At the surface, it examines a disintegrating love story and the moral and psychological issues surrounding it. However, it is the examination of the human condition and the silence of the powerful, often ignored, decisions, that was the most eloquently articulated.
Three is also a reflection of South Asian storytelling’s celebrated themes, and the domestic fracture of a marriage, the guilt of ambition, and the disintegrating conscience. The haunting quality was exacerbated by the fact that the cast was themselves grappling, in a parallel order, with the themes of their characters: endurance, loss, and self-discovery.
A Story That Begins Where Love Ends
The film starts with a quiet domestic disquiet. Dr. Farhan (Nauman Ijaz), a psychiatrist, has everything: a flourishing career, a lovely wife, and a commendable social standing. Yet, one learns that, instead of living a dream life, he is living a life of controlled experiment. He is observing emotions but not experiencing any of his own.
His wife, Sahar (Resham), is a gilded captive in her own house. As the initial affection in the marriage erodes, the couple is engulfed in a toxic atmosphere of silence, suspicion, and suffocation. Farhan’s obsession with his research and Sahar’s emotional imposition becomes the dark shroud that renders her a ghost in her own house.
Narratively, the arrival of a new patient, Aamir (Adeel Hashmi), prepares the viewer for a chilling psychological shift. What begins as a therapeutic relationship rapidly devolves into a morally corrupted scheme of emotional landscape manipulation. Jealousy, emotional betrayal, and moral reckoning form a complex web that entraps and torments all characters.
Three constitutes, in equal parts, a psychological thriller and a disquieting analysis of the human psyche, in particular the dynamics of love and power.
How Real Life Shadowed the Screen
Nauman Ijaz’s characters from his performances are remembered across Pakistan and India. Ijaz off the screen remembered as a cold brilliant man , as far as morally ambiguous characters are concerned. His screen characters are complex and conflicited. In addition to the characters he played fame and solitude tormented Ijaz and he was reflected in his characters.
In the solitude of success interview Ijaz expressed the man behind the actor is the story. Renfield is disconnected from his cold heart andrew. He attempts to connect to the mind of others .
Resham in the three was in the midst was redefined and was attempting to shed the glamorous and melodramatic roles. Pain is the emotion of silience as demonstrated in a clip of the film three. Sahar is the emotion strong and heartbreaking character. She strives to escape from the industry’s stereotypes. Sahar is the emotion strong.
Resham has conducted many interviews where she stated she connects to Sahar’s solitude. “You can be surrounded by people, but still be unseen,” she stated — Sahar’s silent dissent to being invisible.
On the other hand, Adeel Hashmi, mostly recognized for his comic creativity and maintaining an easy-going character, Three gave him a different playing field. Aamir, a character with a concealed agenda, demanded Adeel to restrain the appeal for which he was famous and instead to tap into something far more sinister. Establishing such a character is a courageous step for an actor coming from a family of intellectuals and artists, and Adeel later stated that portraying a character with many layers, and which he needs to be a manipulative character, was difficult for him: “It’s difficult when the character’s darkness begins to seep into your own thoughts.”
The Aesthetics of Stillness.
Using minimalism as a weapon is the genius of Azeem Sajjad, the director. The film’s pacing is meditative which advances to a dominating slowness and encourages the audience to experience the tension that occurs with silence in a home. The use of confined spaces — narrow hallways, shadowed corners, closed doors — becomes symbolic of emotional imprisonment.
Taking authenticity a step further, some indoor scenes were filmed not in a studio but in an actual house. This made filming awful because it gave Three a different, unrefined quality. Reports say that Resham had some emotionally difficult scenes to shoot when it came to Sahar, especially in the bedroom and the kitchen, saying “the walls felt too close, too real.”
There were also critical choices made regarding sound design. Three did not rely on any climactic music. Psychological tension was heightened through ambient sounds — the ticking of clocks, clinking of glass, and muffled footsteps.
Things were not peaceful behind the camera either. The crew was forced to improvise with dim lighting because of budget constraints for several nighttime scenes. However, the low, patchy lighting was a positive choice and contributed to the creepy realism of the film.
Between Applause and Analysis
Three was released but it did not bomb at the box office because it was never meant to. Respectfully, it was one of those slow-burn films that critically got it’s traction through word of mouth. It’s cerebral tone was a stark comparison to the classic European psychological dramas, and critics were quick to recognize it.
However, what made it exemplary was its emotional sincerity. Three was able to treat its audience with such confidence, and with no expectation of spectacle or grandiosity, it was able to quiet the audience, making it think to the level of the film.
Nauman Ijaz fans thought the film was a true to life iteration of the character he would usually play. Ijaz masters the ‘quiet’ character, and the audience would love the ending and argue about it. Farhan’s moral descent was either punishment or liberation. It’s the ambiguity of the character that draws audience to the moral, and even now mental and gender roles and the imbalance in the situations.
The Sanctuary of The Set
The dark themes made the set seem a little less inviting, but that was not the case. Ijaz and Resham are to performers that bring professionalism to the set, holding the crew together even with dark tones. Crew members still tell the Ijaz joke of making a ‘quiet’ jest before ‘turning serious’ camera.
With an intense tone, Adeel Hashmi leaned on Ijaz for this. Iqbal said, ‘Nauman bhai doesn’t act; he inhabits the character’. This describes the level Ijaz was on, that he could encourage an actor merely by his presence.
Some of the discussions were beyond the scope of imagination. The director was inclined towards a more dramatic conclusion, but the actors suggested more subtlety. They thought ambiguity would create a more profound emotional aftertaste — and they were correct.
When Fiction and Life Overlap
Looking back, the most remarkable part about Three is how its actors, without knowing, inhabited parts of their characters. Nauman Ijaz’s reflective isolation, Resham’s subdued fortitude, Adeel’s pursuit of a defining artistic persona — all of these and more resonated and were interwoven into the fabric of the film.
When asked about Three many years later, Resham defined it as “a film about emotional debts — the kind of debts that you can’t repay with words.” This is an equally valid description of the lives of all the people involved in the filmmaking process.
Three is still a film that spoke without losing its attention. It is about the silent battles people endure within the confines of their houses — and within the confines of their own souls.