Director Atul Sabharwal says his latest film “Berlin”, starring Aparshakti Khurana and Ishwak Singh, aims to share the message of empathy in an era of “utter selfishness”. Set in 1990s New Delhi, the spy thriller follows a deaf-mute young man called Ashok Kumar (Singh) on suspicion of being a foreign spy. The case takes a complex turn after a skilled sign language expert Pushkin Verma (Khurana) is brought in to interpret. “We live in an era of utter selfishness and that translates from the voter to the top. It’s not anti-establishment, it’s anti (against) the whole thing of lack of empathy. Pushkin’s agenda is not political but empathy. The message is empathy all in all,” Sabharwal told PTI in an interview.
The filmmaker, also known for “Aurangzeb” and “Class of ‘83”, said “Berlin” is based on his 2016 short story “The Decipherer”. It all started with the idea of a deaf-mute waiter at a cafe.
“I used to go to a Costa cafe in Lokhandwala. They used to employ deaf-mute staff. One of the waiters there was unusually chirpy, he tried to talk to the customers in sign language, he often wanted to know why you had come there. Many actors, scriptwriters used to go there.
“There used to be production meetings. The peripherals of the film industry who didn’t have offices used to hang there. All that used to go on and he would be very inquisitive. That inquisitiveness was the first source of inspiration. That slowly developed into a spy world,” Sabharwal said.
At the time, the writer-director was reading spy novels by Eric Ambler and Len Deighton.
“There are also Michael Caine’s films ‘Funeral in Berlin’ and ‘The Ipcress File’ based on Deighton’s novels. When a world starts taking shape, you try to figure out what story you can narrate within it.” His first note to self was: “The Decipherer” is to ear, what Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” is to eye. Regarded as one of the greatest Hitchcock films, the 1954 title revolves around a bored photographer recovering from a broken leg who passes the time by watching his neighbours and begins to suspect one of them of murder.
“What would happen if I create a character like the one I meet at the cafe who can’t hear and speak, and he discovers a conspiracy?” Sabharwal recalled wondering.
He then narrated it to a writer friend who was starting her production house.
