‘Berlin’ review: Reconstructing the Hindi paranoid thriller

Berlin remembers. The protagonist of Atul Sabharwal’s film is named Pushkin, after the Russian poet. In his first scene, he’s shown dwarfed by an imposing concrete facade, the kind of Brutalist building that can be found all over Delhi, and which is inextricably linked with Soviet city planning. Even the brand of disinfectant Pushkin uses (an anagram of Savlon) has a Russian lilt: Nolsav.

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Pushkin Verma (Aparshakti Khurana), a teacher at a deaf school, is called in by the “Bureau" on an unspecified assignment. The framing in those early scenes tells us he’s out of his depth: he’s a small figure in large empty rooms and stood against looming structures. The man in charge of the Soviet desk, Jagdish Sondhi (Rahul Bose), immediately thrusts him into an interrogation without so much as a briefing. They suspect Ashok Kumar (Ishwak Singh), a deaf waiter, to be a spy, though for whom is unclear. Pushkin will ask him the questions he’s handed, no more, no less, and speak out both his signed questions and Ashok’s responses, which will be recorded and passed up the ladder.

Though it unfolds in the winter of 1993, Berlin is a Cold War spy film, a rarity in Hindi cinema. Set in Delhi, it lays out a specific geography: two Indian spy agencies, the office of the ministry of foreign affairs, the Soviet embassy, the embassy of the German Democratic Republic, and in the middle, a meeting place called Café Berlin. The CIA is mentioned once or twice, but America is mostly absent. Intriguingly, so are Kashmir and Pakistan—though Sabharwal, who’s also written the film, makes them a spectral presence: the ghosts that inform every diplomatic move. On several occasions, our attention is drawn to newspaper articles about Russia. Each time, the accompanying story is about Kashmir.

There’s a possible plan to assassinate the Russian president, due to arrive in a week. But note the casual way in which the film treats this threat. Clearly there’s more at play. A picture starts forming when Pushkin is harassed by members of “Wing", the other intelligence agency, which has its problems with Sondhi. Ashok, who worked at Café Berlin, is definitely mixed up in something... but what exactly? And who’s the sad-looking young woman (Anupriya Goenka) who flits in and out of the story?

The café at the centre of everything is nondescript and unique. The waitstaff are all deaf, a bit of insurance for patrons whose careless words could bring down nations (Ashok describes their function as “behre deewaar", soundproof walls between tables). Ashok admits to being fascinated by the intricate spy games taking place in his view. Over a montage of him pasting tickets and bits of paper from the café into a scrapbook, we hear his testimony in Pushkin’s voice: “They did their work and we made up stories, tried to guess what each is up to. By doing so, we deaf people could imagine we were smart like those officers, that we could think, understand, see like them." Ashok’s desire to feel relevant is at the heart of the film. When he meets a deaf fixer of stolen cars, he’s thrown for a toss, realising that, unlike him, the man was hired for his ability, not because his deafness is useful.

Sabharwal is great at working in moments like this, chance encounters that illuminate character and give his screenplays the rhythms of lived experience. He’s also shown, in his own films and in his writing for others, a knack for burrowing into specific historical settings. The Bombay mill agitations provide the backdrop to the cop drama Class of '83; the ruptures of new nationhood in Jubilee are reflected in the fracturing movie studio at the show’s centre. Berlin is a resolutely drab undercutting of both the overheated Hindi spy film and the increasingly popular 1990s nostalgia narrative. Liberalisation is underway, but it hasn’t changed Pushkin’s life: he doesn’t own a car or have the initiative to seek out an MNC job. He’s stuck in time, just like the spooks who couldn’t adjust to life after Glasnost.

Perhaps some arcane censor board rule prevented Sabharwal from saying Intelligence Bureau and Research and Analysis Wing, but the shortening is fortuitous. “Bureau" and “Wing" are ominous, Kafkaesque in their vagueness. There’s Kafka in other aspects of the film as well: a nervous protagonist whose luck keeps getting worse, the implacable villainy of bureaucracy, paranoia tinged with mordant humour (one of the film’s running gags is how woefully Pushkin fails every time he attempts anything like spy work). The sense of unease is reinforced by Shree Namjoshi’s roving camera; it follows that Berlin is dedicated to Alan J. Pakula, director of paranoid 70s thrillers like The Parallax View and All The President's Men, and Brian De Palma.

I wasn’t fully convinced by Khurana’s movie star in Jubilee but he’s perfect for Pushkin, with his Manoj Prabhakar moustache, ugly sweaters and soul-emptying sighs. Compare his joyless signing to the flourishes of Ashok, played very smartly by Singh as a man in a hole determined to have the time of his life. There’s also a plate of prime ham served by Rahul Bose, a bully who’s constantly frustrated. “Pushkin! Keep talking to us!" he screams when his interrogator misses saying Ashok’s response aloud. A later rant sums up the film. “What is truth?" he spits at Pushkin. “The truth is that which is recorded, which is typed, which is filed, which is signed by an officer, and finally, which is archived." A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths, wrote the other Pushkin. Berlin achieves this without sacrificing any of its cynicism.

‘Berlin’ is on Zee5.

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