Nishabd - Silencing the Sensual

c s venkiteswaran


If Nishabd is an adaptation of Lolita, Ramgopal Varma's film version is 'marriage' compared to 'love' that is Nabokov's novel. It is a very visually appealing film that does not dare to take the plunge into the sensual.



The film begins with the 60 year old photographer played by Amitabh Bachan standing at the edge of an abyss, obviously contemplating suicide. He doesn't take the plunge but lives on to tell the 'story' of his doomed love. True to the proper traditions of Indian cinema in this film also, such love is something that is available only verbally and cerebrally rather than sensually or physically. For, the love of a 60-year old man with an 18 year old is doomed from the beginning within its narrative world. It is fated for damnation and its consummation is eternally postponed, with the girl ultimately gifted back to her young lover of appropriate age. (Even while one appropriate family is made thus, his is shattered by her). The most vulnerable and weakest part of the film is the portrayal (or lack of it) of the sensuality involved in their relationship. Except for the first voyeuristic forays into her body-sights, followed by a trip to the estate, super market and an improptu dance in front of the family, all of which are decent and 'proper', the film is denuded of any indication at the physical and the sensual.

Following the 'decent' traditions of Indian cinema, the film displaces all the explosive potentials and the lures of the flesh turning it into the guilt-ridden confessional mode of a monologue of a brooding protagonist. All the physical sensuality is systematically displaced onto the verdant greenery of the landscape and the dizzying camera work that weaves itself around and caresses structures, objects and characters. What could have been a devastating comment upon the total self-denial that family demands from individuals turns out to be an apologetic glimpse into the abyss: obviously, he is only a shell of what he wants to be and his wife is someone who has sacrificed her dancing career to the demands of the family. So, what could have been a heart-wrenching paen to love and pleasure-seeking, turns out into a public purgatory of guilt.

It is this 'self-restraint' and the economy of guilt within which the film works, that makes Nishabd yet another marriage, one that caresses possibilities but consummates none.

Yun Hota to Kya Hota

What if Hindi cinema…?

Things really seem to be happening and moving in Hindi cinema. In the post-liberalisation era, after being mired for a while with terrorist-links and horror stories of extortion etc, Hindi cinema has really bounced back, both as an industry and in terms of the quality and diversity of the films being produced.

An array of new talents has entered the field, with the likes of Ram Gopal Varma giving the lead. Hs production company The Factory went all out to realise the dreams of many an upcoming filmmaker. Many newcomers and 'upstarts'have made their mark and their only strength has been their passion and the strength of their scripts and vision. This resurgence has had its ripple effect even on the commercial mainstream, with the mammoth waking up to the new opportunities and talents around. Hence a flurry of films like Munnabhai, the 'Factory' films and those of Priyadarsan. Star presence, exotic locations, and spices are not the only things that matter here.

Nasrudeen Shah's debut film Yun Hota to Kya Hota (What if..?) rides this wave to create a film with a global theme and appeal. It is a film that takes 9/11 as the climactic moment to look into what it actually did to human lives and dreams. Totally non-judgmental in approach, it weaves together the otherwise run-of-the-mill stories of four people from diverse backgrounds and different ambitions, who desperately manage to make it to that 'land of opportunities'.

Tilottama (Konkana Sen) is a runaway bride, who wants to get back to her newly wed husband in US daring her in laws. Salim (Irfan Khan) is also a sort of stockbroker on the run, who accidentally gets involved in a murder, a stock market scam and to top it all an intense love affair with an elderly dancer (Suhasini Mulay). Rahul is a poor but promising student whom destiny forces to the US. What looked impossible to him suddenly turns into reality when his dependent father dies and his girl friend makes a generous 'grant' to send him off. Rajubhai (played by the inimitable Paresh Rawal) is a cultural organizer-cum conduit to take people to the dreamland. But this time, it is not an ordinary journey for him, for he has with him Payal, the daughter of his old flame Tara (Ratna Pathak), whom he wants to present a bright future and life. All these people with diverse dreams and a whole life ahead of them find themselves together in that fateful flight from Boston that crashed into the World Trade Centre on September 11. Interestingly, out of these four 'desperados', only Tilottama the properly married wife, survive. She misses her flight and joins her husband. All the rest, who have 'fuzzy' relationships perish. Salim's affair is marked by her promiscuity and later, betrayal, while for Rajubhai, it is the revival of a love affair, but now, in the form of an extra marital affair. The young Rahul's relationship with Khushboo is a very ambiguous one. Is it yet another accident or coincidence? Randomness and chance being central to the story, is fate and the narrative spinning a different yarn for each?

In the global context of 9/11, the film places the blind and unitary world of terrorism against the explosive diversity of dreams of the ones they killed while executing their macabre plan. It is this stark contrast between the forces of dark closure that looms large over the world (invisible, violent sudden and faceless in the film) and the exuberance and yearning that characterizes the life on the other that animates the film. Is it just a bitter irony that both these forces find themselves in the same 'flight' and are bound for the same destination?

Carry on, Munnabhai!

Lage Raho Munnabhai, the sequel to Munnabhai MBBS, directed by Raj Kumar Hirani, has turned into one of the most successful films in recent years. Responses indicate that, apart from the box office, it has awakened the Gandhians from their slumber, with different groups taking sides as to whether the film is for Gandhism (giving it another lease of life, this time through commercial Bollywood) or only makes a travesty of it for commercial gains thereby trivializing the whole thing. Running as an undercurrent of all these discussions is the dread or total perplexity about such a film becoming phenomenally popular with the masses. This immense popularity, in a way, seems to bring upon the intellectuals a self-imposed responsibility to 'explain' and explicate it. But like Gandhi himself such exercises prove futile from the beginning. They invariably end up either as puerile moralism or mindless indignation. Such ideological or moralistic tools invariably fail to 'explain away' the fuzzy logic of films like this.

For one, the film works at various levels, it is not only about Gandhi or Gandhism. Being a sequel, it has a set of already established characters who have a free take on the System once again. If in the earlier edition, they made fun of the medical and educational institution, (thus also making a bitter comment upon the 'merit' issue and the crass commercialization of the sector), this time they taken on contemporary politics and power structures. For this, they have two aids; one is the figure of Gandhi, who appears to Munna. Gandhi functions as the figure of the past, one that invokes nostalgic idealism and grit, commitment and sacrifice. The other is the radio, the tribal drum as McLuhan would call it, taking Munna's voice to the urban public. While the former functions as the inner voice the latter is its amplification into the external world. (It is Gandhi speaking through Munna, whose voice is in turn spoken by Radio) Woven into this dual discourses are the narratives of love and longing, that of the hero and heroine, that of the aged cronies, of male bonding between Munna and his sidekick Circuit (a striking performance by Arshad Warsi), and of the various people who get into the radio broadcast network of Munna's Gandhiana. Running through all this and animating them are the concerns about corruption, greed, indifference to everything public, duplicity, etc. It is all about the 'inner' and the 'outer'. While Munnabhai is all goodness outside and goondagiri is only the surface, his 'other' Lucky is the reverse. The latter played by Boman Irani, that of the avaricious real estate agent, summarizes it all – though, in the outer, social world, he is a cut throat who wouldn't hesitate to break or bend any rules to get things done, at home he is an angel, dutiful husband and a darling father to his only daughter. His is a character that starkly embodies the total split between private/familial and public/social morality. It is not a coincidence that it is his daughter who ultimately brings about the climax, when she confesses to her father-in-law-to-be about her father manipulating the kundali to 'fix' her marriage. This confession also brings the private and the hidden 'out' into the open. This 'solution' within the domain of the family, in turn results in solving the larger issue – that of giving back the ancestral house that belongs to Jhanvi (Munna's love), which again, is also a move parallel to that of the hero, one from 'goonda-giri' to 'Gandhi-giri'.


The film ends hilariously with Lucky himself ending up as a devotee of Gandhi and gaining his darshan, and making earnest attempts to take his photograph along with him! Kudos to the film, for it indeed needs a lot of grit to make the hero coolly rubbishing kundalini by holding a gun to the pundit's head and asking him to predict his future!