In Asim Abbasis’s recent ott -release BarzakhThe first episode, which premiered on Friday, Salman Shahid plays the well-to-heeled Jafar Khanzada-Khushhal Khan his younger self, moving to the city to become a well-to-do man. Everyone is ready to marry the ghost of his dead lover, Mahtab (Anika Zulfikar), Jafar marks the apartment by summoning his two sons, Shehryar (Fawad Khan) and Saifullah (Fawad M Khan), while Sanam Saeed plays the Enigmatic Scheherezade , his caretaker -slash -daughter figure.

Bathed in a hot, foggy teal and orange palette, kinematographer Mo Azmi’s atmospheric work brings to life an eternal melancholy. More than creepy is the unnatural union between man and the dead a well -developed reminder of the delicate intimacy of ghost films.

Together with Azmi, Abbasi turns the lavish Hunza Valley setting, filled with rich, fiery foliage of falls in his most autonomous work yet. Even those who are difficult to impress can approve Cake and Churails‘Visual style, pepped with lots of famous footage of famous shots for Cinephiles to spot. If Abbasis’s style in both his last two offers were devised as a movie lover even, with Barzakh The filmmaker finally builds his own vocabulary.

Maybe that’s why, even as the quiet city where Jafar has erected his luminous tourist spot, his growing eccentricities are protesting, Barzakh Feels far from “unnatural”. In Abbasis’s past stories, the poor and released often threw unnatural unions with those in power. Be it his debut film in 2018, CakeThere is a pruning drama out of a Christian nurse generous victim of a feudal family. Or the elite women of Churails who forget their high -community protocols and find sisters in their home.

Cinema of the rich?

For a man whose cinematic universe centers the rich in dramatic proximity to the poor, Abbasi is one of the few directors who reproduce the signature Pakistani trope in contemporary local scene. Granted, Abbasis wealthy characters do not spoil themselves with insipide platitude, nor the poor in his world do not bear the burden of moral right. Sheer Class Disparity, Made even more vulgar, is a page taken directly from Pakistan’s screen history.

The small screen has also promised to perform half of its storytelling between Seth Sahab Ka Larka and Mazdoor Ki Larkito swap the roles of its most bold. Much is there to complain about TV’s malnourished production design, the sad monotony of set only one that fails. Often, it seems that the much-loved industry has three houses in rotation to mark the socio-economic distinctive features of a manager, a driver and a rag-to-rigging turned businessman.

There are many ways to scare the poor world building of Pakistani television, but finding the echoes of previous cine hits in it is at worst descriptive. Class on screen has not come without the luggage for moral qualifications. In 1971’s Tehzeeba wealthy componentic shahid, sorry that Laga Hai Husn Ka Bazaar When he sees his wife, a village-bred Rani, succumb to the joys of modernity. Writing is on the wall for those who are willing to see.

Five years later Waheed Murad will donate a thick shawl in his mansion in Zubaida And repeat the role of living room patriarch. The one who preaches both the deviant woman, Babra Shariff in this case, and the cinema about the construction of respectable families. A message that was considered with its proper gravity.

Rich in theme and aesthetic

Abbasis The World is rarely devoted to in the form of the 1970s and 80s cinema, but his portrayal of the class is always the greatest sight. It is precisely to say that the filmmaker “reproduces” these socio -economic anxiety, as opposed to television, which has taken to “regurgrate” the outdated high virtue signaling.

Call it the death of media knowledge in the hands of Digital Inrush, the cinema of escapism has been loosened by a policy of relatability. Until my childhood was for Karan Johar to land Rahul’s helicopter in Palatial Raichand property both fantastic and taken for granted.

Magnificence of K3G Feels now exaggerated. Times and emotions have changed. Bong Joon-Ho’s drama in 2019 Parasite is one of the more popular clear deployments in this cinema of the ordinary. And made no mistake. The ordinary is now more in fashion than ever. Not that Abbasi seems to be indifferent. With just the first episode of Barzakh, The director turns his affair with the rich both promising and kosher.

It is not that a story about the over -class surplus is a dull or unwanted topic. From Luis Buñuels The exterminating angel to Govind Nihalani’s PartyArthouse Cinema has produced many successful polemics against the intellectual and economic elites. Far less often one sees that the wealth of wealth characterizes an entire growing body of work that is not cursed by its subject.

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