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Barzakh assessment: Asim Abbasi returns to Zee Zindagi 4 years after his gripping crime thriller Churails. He pulls off a casting coup by getting Fawad Khan and Sanam Saeed to reunite 11 years after their standard romantic drama Zindagi Gulzar Hai. However on this people fantasy, they are not paired collectively. They play unlikely companions on a religious journey. However the journey is so fettered with its personal excesses that it turns into more and more strenuous to understand and admire what Asim goes for right here.
(Additionally Learn: Fawad Khan-Sanam Saeed’s present Barzakh pulled down from YouTube in Pakistan. Right here’s why)
Caught in limbo
The story is ready within the Land of Nowhere, a valley presumably in Pakistan, the place Jafar Khanzada (Salman Shahid), a rich patriarch, invitations his estranged sons to partake in his third marriage ceremony. They’re his youngsters from the primary marriage ceremony, however that is not the one purpose why they’re awkward. Jafar is now getting married to his old flame Mahtab, who died a long time in the past, however he is decided that she nonetheless exists… on the opposite facet. Non-believers like his youthful son Shahryar (Fawad) dismiss the occasion, whereas his caregiver Scheherezade (Sanam) implores us to think about the unknown.
That is what the director does too, by engulfing the narrative in a supernatural embrace. There are fairies with rocks tied to their backs that weigh them down, as a substitute of wings that give them flight. There is a tree of life (or demise?), the stem of which rips aside upon any cosmic turbulence. And there is a mysterious lady who retains portray and gifting visitors’ deepest darkest secrets and techniques to them. And if these visible clues weren’t sufficient, Asim gift-wraps the present with quotes from the Ebook of Nowhere in Rumi-like font, a voiceover emanating prefer it’s from the grave, and sure know-it-all characters enunciating like they’re studying out listlessly from a snail-speed teleprompter.
The remedy proves to be extra of a hindrance than an help to the storytelling. It is amply evident that Asim is attempting to color a Pakistani/South Asian people fantasy counterpart of Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019), however the visible imagery is not as strikingly authentic because the Florence Pugh-starrer. I nonetheless cannot neglect the picture of floral creepers nearly engulfing her character. Sadly, there isn’t any such cinematic sorcery at play right here. Mo Azmi’s cinematography milks the gorgeous areas – the pink sky, the amber leaves, and the expansive mountains are delicate reminders that there is one thing bigger at play. However the stakes are all the time communicated by speaking right down to us. As if it is a riddle that we won’t remedy not as a result of we’re attempting, however as a result of they refuse to present us sufficient clues within the first place.
Characters > Worldbuilding
Barzakh would’ve been a far gripping sequence had it not allowed the worldbuilding to devour the pretty fascinating characters. Salman Shahid lends a definite dismissive and conceited streak to the patriarch Jafar that he comes throughout as a person who could have been shielding his brute drive together with his obsession with old flame. Or he cherished so deeply that he can not help however hate with the identical depth when that love is taken away prematurely. When he says, “Mujhe pyar karna aata hello nahi hai” (I do not even know easy methods to love), you exhausting agree, but in addition want he’d have lived a much less harsh life.
Fawad Khan’s Shehryar is the standard rebellious son who vows by no means to comply with in his emotionally unavailable father’s footsteps, solely to overcompensate together with his son to finally grow to be the identical as his outdated man. Once more, the actor brings truckloads of empathy and a deep-seated ache to his portrayal that each time you see him unravel, you wish to give him a reassuring hug. There’s additionally his elder brother, who retains his life apart to deal with his ailing mom, however will get pissed off to the purpose that he stuffs meals into her mouth when she refuses to eat. The exact same frustration is echoed by Shehryar’s spouse, an unwilling mom, who imposes the caregiving on her toddler son out of postpartum despair.
Barzakh touches upon these on a regular basis themes of the burden of caregiving, the cyclic nature of parenting, and the curbing of sexuality with a delicate contact. However they’re overwhelmed down by its lofty concepts of life, demise, afterlife, and stability of the universe. Positive, the supernatural would’ve made for a brand new technique to inform the identical outdated story in a contemporary format as a substitute of going the slice-of-life route. However it’s hurled like an assault on the viewers’s intelligence slightly than utilized like a sound narrative gadget. Even the cringe however humorous demise jokes cracked by Fawad and his son’s characters would’ve sufficed. For these inform us that we want not take demise critically, but in addition remind us that we won’t brush it underneath the carpet both. Asim Abbasi might’ve approached Barzakh extra with this telling lightness of contact as a substitute of the manufactured heavy-handedness. By attempting to straddle the 2, he simply makes his storytelling invariably caught in limbo.
