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Review Nishabd
Cast : Amitabh Bachchan,
Jiah Khan
Direction : Ram Gopal Verma
A film like ‘Nishabd’ is
certainly not for the laity. Masses and box office will not be kind to
this film. After all, it has no songs, no items, no moral preaching, no
action and no heroism. Moreover, there are some jerks in editing. And the
print quality of certain scenes is below par. Yet I say that ‘Nishabd’
is a piece of good cinema because a few flaws in the form can never undermine
the strength of content, which ‘Nishabd’ abounds with.
Nishabd meaning wordless.
And that’s what this quixotic relationship remains through most of the
film. Notwithstanding the fact that this was a relationship that was crying
out for words, reasons, explanations, resolutions and articulations for
the strange new emotions that were supposedly taking birth for the first
time on the Indian screen. Or is it the second time? Remember Jogger’s
Park, that charming little number where Perizaad played a more senior Lolita
to Victor Bannerjee.
‘Nishabd’ is a film about
loss: about loss of love and loss of purpose in life. It is about the inexplicable
desire to reclaim youth when one is in the sunset of one’s life. This is
the rationale presented by the movie’s 60-year-old protagonist while explaining
his attraction towards a teenager. This attraction, though not uncommon,
is seldom expressed in real life. And those who express it mostly end up
like the protagonist of ‘Nishabd’.
Nishabd is more American
Beauty than Lolita with the storyline borrowing heavily from the Kevin
Spacey-Mena Suvari Oscar-applauded film. Here, it is Jia who plays the
daughter’s friend who stays over and sets strange emotions stirring through
the reclusive dad (Amitabh Bachchan). But unlike director Sam Mendes, Ram
Gopal Verma sanitises the film completely of all sexual overtones which
would necessarily be a part of such a cross-generational attraction. No,
unlike Kevin Spacey who does normal stuff under the sheets, each time he
fantasises about the blonde beauty sleeping in his house, Mr Bachchan is
rarely seen peeking or throwing a surreptitious glance at the dusky beauty
sprawling before him in shorts and see-through skirts.
Okay, then it isn’t physical-sexual.
So what is it: the attraction that brings them together? Philosophical,
spiritual, psychical, mental, cultural....Don’t know and don’t get to know
too. All that we can guess is that Jia, a product of a broken home, with
a step dad, succumbs to Oedipus. And Vijay, the forty-year older photographer
and family man flips for her hose pipe antics and her Take-Lite poetics.
Wish the director had allowed Amitabh a little more fun and foreplay before
he became overridden with guilt and depression. The joyousness and wild
abandon of the relationship doesn’t really come through and the resolution
of the conflict fills you with much inadequacy.
What remains is the camera-friendly
and immensely confident Ms Jiah Khan who makes such good use of her body
as an instrument of expression. Yes, she’s quite a natural and pitches
in a perfect desi Lolita act. Amitabh is in great form too, specially when
the director allows him those brief moments of joy — he’s ticklish playing
footsie and does quite a little jig with his little girl — before burdening
him with sorrow. Technically too, the film is quintessential Ramu, with
the camera working wonders with extreme close shots, the way it did in
Sarkar. Only if Ramu had dared to break the mould a bit more and not been
wary of the moral police...Ah! Nishabd would have ended up as landmark
cinema!
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