Rating – **** 4 stars
Berlin: Starring Aparshakti Khurana, Ishwak Singh, Rahul Bose & Anupriya Goenka
Directed by Atul Sabharwal
Streaming on Zee5 India
Berlin is not the Berlin you’re thinking about. It isn’t set in Germany, but instead, it is mostly in a confined interrogation room with two fine actors displaying their best – Aparshakti Khurana and Ishwak Singh. The former is a lowly and humble teacher, who does a dead-end job and has a dead-end life but is hired to establish communication with the latter, an accused spy: why you may ask? Because, Ishwak Singh’s Ashok is a deaf-and-mute man and Aparshakti Khurana’s Pushkin knows and understands sign language. The premise of Berlin screams of unlimited potential, being set in 1993 and a web of mysteries and shockers to unravel. Director Atul Sabhwarwal is in no hurry and he stages each and every scene meticulously, slowly and slowly unravelling threads that keep you hooked, and thus, shocked.
While most of the heavy lifting is done by Khurana and Singh, they are brilliantly assisted by fine actors like Rahul Bose, Anupria Goenka, the late Nitesh Pandey and others. Bose with his casual suaveness, Goenka being the emotional link to an otherwise dry setting of relationships and the rest of the supporting cast lending great assistance to the main storyline makes Berlin consistently engaging.
If I say anything else about the story, it might act as a spoiler, but one thing cannot be denied: the way the interrogation room scenes are set and performed. The one-on-one action between Khurana and Singh make for some of the finest sequences and there is a genuine chemistry between the duo owing to the unusual way they communicate. Khurana might be the mouthpiece but Singh exhibits his fine acting prowess and once again reminds, what he is capable of. And even with Khurana, the actor, after wowing everyone with Jubilee last year also puts himself on further notice for other filmmakers to take note that he is capable of so much more, as she shines throughout being the man, on whose shoulders, the film essentially lies.
The one drawback of Berlin mostly lies with the runtime and build-up to the big reveals and culmination of events. Interestingly, the film only clocks about 1 hour and 50 minutes which is extremely forgivable but it seems much longer owing to the slow burns becoming slower and slower.
The film does manage to pull you back in from the snail-like treatment in the last half hour very effectively as you might have your jaw dropped on a couple of big moments. There is no doubt that is director Atul Sabhwarwal’s finest so far, and as for Singh and Khurrana, they are just getting started. Apart from that, Berlin is unique, unconventional and an example of fine writing transpiring into fine performances thus being a good package to be engaged in, intrigued by and entertained by.