‘Barzakh’ series review: Fawad Khan delivers a compelling, exuberant saga

William Faulkner wrote, “The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.” Barzakh — images, thoughts, sounds — respond to that famous Faulknerian sentiment. The title refers to a kind of limbo, an earthly purgatory, where the dead roam among the living. The six-part series is shot in the spectacular Hunza Valley, in northern Pakistan, and is drenched in a dismal, decadent beauty. The characters converse in pseudo-spiritual passages and heart-wrenching nonsense (and also smoke mushrooms). The mountains, as usual, hold the key to everything. Watching the series, I found myself nervously wondering if, across the border, director Imtiaz Ali was paying attention. What if he felt a little defeated, and took this as a challenge?

Mild spoilers…

In the final stages of life, Jafar (Salman Shahid), the reclusive resort owner battling dementia, has decided to marry again. This is his third and final marriage, he vows. Jafar’s estranged sons, Sheheryar (Fawad A Khan) and Saifullah (Fawad M Khan), have been summoned, while the third child, Scheherazade (Sanam Saeed) – a daughter whose birthplace is uncertain – is at his service. Jafar stays in his huge wood-panelled resort, called ‘Mehtab Mahal’, named after his first and true love. He says he wants to marry Mehtab (Anika Zulfiqar). Also – know this – she is a ghost.

The flashbacks shown at the beginning and end of each episode are a useful concept in British-Pakistani director Asim Abbasi’s series. Shot in a boxed-in aspect ratio, the flashbacks give us bits of the characters’ pasts, some tender, some tragic, and serve to serve the larger story. Some of these roles are played by young actors; as such, by the time past and present blend together – as they always did – we feel comfortable in their struggles and traumas. It gives the otherwise slow-moving series an epic sheen: for instance, without the happy-go-lucky Khan as the young Zafar, who moves through the world to make his fortune, romantically resting his head on the bus window, would we have cared about the patriarch babbling in the present day, dreaming of lunar eclipses and weddings in the mountains?

I loved the playfulness and absurd humour of Abbasi’s previous Pakistani series, a crime thriller. witches (also on ZEE5) However, thematically, Barzakh It’s a close second to his 2018 debut feature film CakeAbout two sisters who come together in a time of crisis and then get entangled. Here, both of Jaffer’s grown-up boys bring baggage with them: Sheheryar is a widower and single father; the partnerless Saifullah lacks an emotional performance. Abbasi is superb, exploring his favourite themes of guilt and generational trauma. The heavy material – allegories about female oppression, religious fanaticism and the erasure of ethnic communities – mostly lands with a bang.

It’s a painful, unflinchingly artistic series. Abbasi and cinematographer Mo Azmi get lost in lush mountains filled with trees: chinars, apricots. Everything seems full of metaphor: leaves, doves, palm fronds, mysterious moon signs written on a shaman’s wall. The rocks on the ghosts’ backs look like angel wings from an angle. A circular door frame is reminiscent of the ouroboros tattoo on Scheherazade’s arm. The characters appear trapped in a strange valley of longing and death. Jafar lives in a literal haunted house, though the lives of ordinary village folk seem equally enchanted (they seem to agree on what is “the womb of the universe”).

A scene from ‘Barzakh’

Four episodes in, the series hits a terrifying wrong note – a psychedelic whimsy that pops the mood of sustained mysticism Abbasi has so carefully built up. It veers, momentarily, away from wildness and surrealism into the realm of pop psychology and stage performance art, into a bad variety show. Few of the imagery in it is as striking as it is Barzakh It lacks the fragmented, authentic dreamlike quality of Aditya Vikram Sengupta JonakIt’s not as if Abbasi is only out to woo the art film world; his show is marketed as episodic TV, aimed at art film fans. Life is a garden and other serial hits from the subcontinent.

Ever since he was unceremoniously phased out from our screens, Indian audiences have long yearned to see Fawad A Khan. As Shahryar, the actor combines his wintery handsomeness with a comic sarcasm that proves crucial: “Are you always this drunk?”, he asks Scheherazade after one of her (many) poetic musings. His namesake, Fawad M Khan, who plays Saifullah, is equally moving in some effective scenes, while Shahid – whom Hindi film fans will miss Kabul Express give more Ishqiya in the movies—is amusingly irritable and vain in a flamboyant role. Every time the old Zafar barks and barks in a sweet voice, I am reminded of the great Indian actor Pran, who, like Shahid, was born in pre-independence Lahore. Artists, like souls, are borderless creatures.

Barzakh streams weekly on ZEE5 and Zindagi’s YouTube channel.