New Delhi: After a delayed premiere in Pakistan that even left the director worried, the verdict is out for Barzakh. In the Fawad Khan-Sanam Saeed show, the story has emerged victorious—so much so that it’s being hailed as a cinematic masterpiece.
Barzakh’s first episode released on 19 July, marking Fawad Khan’s single screen return and gripping people across the subcontinent. Fans to critics, no one can stop raving about it.
“I have never seen something so cinematically beautiful and that in Pakistani cinema that reminds me of Wes Anderson!”, one social media user wrote about the show, which is streaming on Zee5 in India and on YouTube in Pakistan.
For others, it is Pakistani cinema’s moment of glory. Dawn called the first episode “profound, dark and visually stunning”.
“This is what Pakistan is capable of. This is what our directors and actors can pull, if provided with enough budgets and platforms. It’s about time that producers start thinking out of the box and utilise the creative talent in the country properly”, an X user stressed.
Overwhelmed director, mesmerised audience
Social media is now rife with discussions. Every aspect of the show is being dissected—for some, the show’s cinematography is a subject worth studying, while others are desperate to figure out the ‘visual motifs’ in the show. One user compared it to the popular German thriller series Dark (2017), while others are telling Pakistani channels to learn from Barzakh’s showmakers.
The “overwhelmed” director Asim Abbasi took to X to thank the audience for loving a show he made “very selfishly, very indulgently”, for himself.
Abbasi has described Barzakh as “a tale of fathers and sons, of a world destroyed by the follies of its men, and mended by the faith of its women”. The show, he added, “is about what connects all of us and what will remain once we don’t remain in this universe as human beings.”
Barzakh is a story of 76-old Jafar Khanzada (played by Salman Shahid) residing in the Land of Nowhere, overseeing his resort alongside Scheherazade (played by Saeed), a woman whose lineage remains mysterious. JK, as he is known, stubbornly denies his advancing dementia and summons his estranged sons Shehryar (played by Fawad Khan) and Saifullah (played by Fawad M Khan) to witness his ‘third and final’ marriage to his supposed true love, a woman no one has encountered. In Abbasi’s world of magic realism, she remains a mere phantom.
The Barzakh fever has gripped the country, but some viewers are still disappointed. The Khan-Saeed duo playing siblings is not sitting well with those who had been waiting for their on-screen pairing. For others, “Barzakh is very haram”.
Also read: Fawad Khan’s Barzakh trailer leaves fans in awe. They call it cinematic masterpiece, insane
A Fawad Khan show
The performances by Sanam Saeed, Khushhal Khan and others are all being appreciated, but it is Fawad Khan who truly remains in the spotlight.
“Barzakh’s most stunning feature is Fawad Khan, who, in his limited screen time, manages to take your breath away. Whether it’s the simple glance or one of his classic smirks, Khan makes the mundane special and the special — spectacular”, Khaleej Times wrote.
For Khan however, the reason for doing the show was Abbasi. “The USP was the script, the team and ‘Asim Abbasi’,” he had said in an interview.
Khan also described his character Shehryar as an “unhinged psychiatrist”— a candidate for therapy himself, even calling his role emotionally distressing.
The actor, who has a massive following in India too, told his interviewer that only time and circumstances will tell if he will return to work in Bollywood.
“The process has already started with collaborations such as Barzakh’, he added, leaving his Indian audience hopeful.