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Recent Reviews by Shilajit Mitra
The Hindu
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Shilajit Mitra is a film critic and journalist with The Hindu. Based in Mumbai, he has been writing on cinema for over seven years. He started out contributing reviews to the Times Now and Zoom websites; later, for five years, he worked as a critic for The New Indian Express. Currently, he reviews Hindi films and beyond for The Hindu. He also writes features and opinion pieces for the publication, and curates a fortnightly recommendations column called Screen Share. He loves talking films, on end.
Films reviewed on this Page
Barzakh
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Fawad Khan grounds a bewitching, overblown saga
Fawad Khan and Sanam Saeed star in this feverishly artful series by British-Pakistani director Asim Abbasi
“The past is not dead. It’s not even past,” wrote William Faulkner. Everything in Barzakh — images, ideas, sounds — responds to that famously Faulknerian sentiment. The title refers to a kind of limbo, an earthly purgatory, where the dead move amidst the living. The six-part series has been shot in the ravishing Hunza Valley, in Northern Pakistan, and is drenched in a despairing, deciduous beauty. Characters converse in pseudo-spiritualistic fragments and heartsick hokum (and also do shrooms). Mountains, as usual, hold the key to everything. Watching the series, I found myself nervously wondering if, across the border, the director Imtiaz Ali was paying attention. What if he feels a little bested, and takes it up as a challenge?