Berlin movie review: The production design is the true star of this spy picture, which stars Ishwak Singh and Aparshakti Khurana and was directed by Atul Sabharwal.
A spy thriller, by definition, needs to have spies, and thrills.Berlin is a 1993 Delhi drama that centers on the actions of two men, Pushkin Verma (Aparshakti Khurana) and Ashok Kumar (Ishwak Singh), as they assess each other in a gray government building. The former is a speech-and-hearing impaired person who is suspected of being a foreign spy, and the latter is a teacher in a deaf-mute institute.
There are lots of spies in the area, jumping out of stuffy offices, looting safes in little apartments in sarkaari colonies, and sharing secrets in Berlin, a cafe that serves as a listening post and clearinghouse for spies from various backgrounds.The big event which has everyone agog is the imminent arrival of the Russian president, and the spooks suspect an assassination plan is afoot: hence, arrests and interrogations.
The real hero of this film, directed by Atul Sabharwal, is the production design. Delhi has never looked drearier, or duller, or greyer than in this, even though you do wonder about the location of Berlin cafe, purportedly somewhere in the famed circularity of Connaught Place. It is winter, when the skies are overcast and there is no sun. We literally do not see colour in the entire run-time for 2 hours and some, except in a couple of interior scenes in domestic settings.
Berlin movie review: The two main leads, Ishwak Singh as the orphan who never had the chance to play football for his institute but is demonstrating deft footwork in a dark cell while dodging pointed questions, and Aparshakti Khurana as the everyday Joe Pushkin Verma (the name is a stroke of genius, a throwback to the socialist times when Russian literature was easily and cheaply available in the country and Indo-Russian ties were close), are both well-written. Singh stands out in particular because of his amazing eyes.
But the crucial element in a film like this, which ideally lights a fuse and allows for a slow-burn, is escalating tension. That’s absent, even when the characters– Rahul Bose as Sondhi, the leader of the investigating pack, Kabir Bedi as the big chief, Anupriya Goenka as a mysterious Mata Hari-type, and several others—are involved in dodgy pursuits which lead to torture, honey-pot seductions, blackmail, and dead bodies. The rivalry between local agencies called Wing and Bureau (standing in, presumably, for RAW and CBI) feels concocted and colourless. The only interesting characters are out of this net: Joy Sengupta as a snarky gent, speaking of liberalisation and ambition, leaves a mark in just one scene; so does the actor playing his daughter, as Pushkin’s potential bride.
At no point did I feel a sense of fear for any of the characters. Or of them. ‘Berlin’’s world, where faceless, nameless characters live in the shadows, doing shadowy things, tries inhabiting John le Carre territory. Ever tried reading one of his classics without holding your breath? Here, there’s no dread, only a spreading dullness.
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