Nishabd – Movie Review

Bollywood moves one step forward

Image Courtesy: IndiaFm.com

Ram Gopal Verma always tells a story in a very realistic way. He is able to bring strong and controversial themes on to the screen and has to catch the audience unawares. From Rangeela to Satya to now Nishabd. He has shown both versatility and courage in trudging the path not much traveled in bollywood.

Nishabd is the story of an elderly man’s love towards a young girl who is still in her teens. More disturbing (by Indian values) is that she is his daughter’s friend. Jia (Jiah Khan), the girl in question comes to Vijay’s (Amitabh Bachan) house on vacation from Australia. Vijay, a photographer by profession, is attracted to the spirit of this brash, in your face, carefree girl, as well as her legs. As he makes it abundantly clear, this is not a ‘love at first sight’ affair that we usually find in regular bollywood movies.

As for Jia, the movie doesn’t make it clear what her true feelings are for the older man. Maybe she is attracted to his intelligence, as any younger person in a relationship would feel towards an older partner. Maybe it’s just an infatuation born out of a lack of father figure in her own life or maybe it could be just that she truly loves him. We are none the wiser at the end of the movie.

Image Courtesy: hindu.com

The reason we do not find this out is because the movie is entirely told from Vijay’s viewpoint. We therefore know more about his feelings for the girl than her feelings towards him even though she is seen as encouraging his feelings and certainly as making the first advances towards him. We understand his inner turmoil and almost feels sorry for him.

RGV’s direction is very efficient. He tells the story at a pace that suits the overall pace of the movie. He has picturised the whole movie in a tinge of grey perhaps symbolizing the theme of the movie itself. He plays around with the camera angles giving us a topsy turvy view of the doomed relationship, not to mention the legs. Yes, legs play a huge part of this movie to the point of being obsessive.

The star of the movie undoubtedly is Amitabh Bachan. For someone like me who has grown up watching his successful onscreen image of an angry young man, it was unnerving to watch him being so utterly vulnerable. And I am saying that in a good way. The Big B is now able to break free of the constraints and compulsions which used to bog him down his earlier career. He is now able to play roles which he could not have dreamed of earlier.

Image Courtesy: movies.sulekha.com

His vulnerability just pours out of the screen. He conveys most of the emotions very clearly without the use of his biggest asset, his voice. He does much of his emoting through his eyes. You can sense his pain, his lust and his love for Jia solely through his eyes. RGV makes much use of this with his trademark close-up shots. If in Sarkar he used that to convey power, here he uses it for a totally different effect. Big B even uses his formidable gait to convey the shame he feels while confronting his family with his feelings.

The rest of the cast does their job with aplomb. The newcomer Jia plays her role with sensuality and exudes rebellion in her every look. But strangely I did not find her as sexy as some of Verma's other heroines. Most notably Urmila. Revathy and Nazer too gives a creditable performance.

Image Courtesy: Photobucket.com

My only grouse with the movie is that the ending seemed a bit too sudden and forced. We are not given enough time to digest Vijay’s disintegration into nothingness. But still this is a brave step forward for bollywood. Eventhough we still have a long way to go in handling tough and uneasy themes, every step taken towards it should still be applauded.

Rating: 3.5/5

Bollywood

Bold New Bollywood

There has always been a set formula for any Bollywood movie over the years. It would either be a love story or it would be an action thriller (read revenge movie). In the love story, boy would meet girl and would promptly fall in love with each other at the drop of a hat. One of them would be poor and the other rich. Their families would fight tooth and nail over their pairing. Ultimately love conquers all and all is well that ends well. As for the action movies, some great injustice or crime might be committed against the hero and the rest of the movie would be his quest for vengeance, in which he would ultimately succeed. Add to this lavishly picturized songs and a ridiculous comedy track and you have your Bollywood movie made. All this has changed in the last one year.

If you look at the movies released last year they are vastly different form one another. From Bollywood’s first super hero in ‘Krishh’ to the thought provoking ‘Rang De Basanthi’. From ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ to ‘Kabul Express’ to ‘Dhoom 2’ the movies have been vastly different from one another.

In ‘Krish’ India received its own version of Superman and it immediately was taken to hearts by the kids of this country. The day of merchandising too arrived along with it and Bollywood made tons of money form the whole brand. If Krsih was an out and out commercial venture, ‘Rang De Basanthi’ proved that movies can in fact influence people’s thinking and get them motivated to raise their voices. It showed today’s generation not to take anything lying down and to raise their voice against injustice. The movie’s theme was so influential it had its repercussion in real life issues like the Jessica Lal, the Priyadarshini Mattoo and the Nitish Katara murder cases. The public outcry against the injustice in these cases were amazingly similar to the events depicted in the film.

‘Lage Raho Munnabahai’ made Gandhi cool to a generation who has now forgotten his values or even more shameful, has forgotten him itself. They re-introduced Gandhi and his philosophies to those who think that he was only a part of some bygone fable. The movie did this by showing Gandhi’s teachings in a package more digestible to the new generation and they lapped it up with open arms.

‘Kabul Express’ was one of those rare road movies in Bollywood. This movie was about two Indian journalists traveling to post 9/11 Afghanistan and the events and people they meet along the way. It was completely different from anything the Indian audience had witnessed before.

Dhoom 2, was a complete high budget commercial flick. It belonged to the action adventure genre and became the biggest hit of the year. It even had a much talked about kissing scene between Hrithink Roshan and Aishwarya Rai. Add to that some superb visual effects, by Indian standards, and the movie went on to become a nationwide hit.

Even the king of formula film making in Bollywood, Karan Johar, had to get out of his comfort zone to make ‘Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna’. Johar who usually deals with opulent love stories was forced to tackle a serious subject like infidelity and incompatibility in marriages. It is another matter that he still managed to candy floss the matter in his own way. The point is that filmmakers today realize that the audience requires something different and with substance to sustain their interest.

The shift from the formula films to these bold new ventures have not come overnight. It has been building up for quite some time. The main reason, one feels, is that Bollywood now is catering to a much more international audience than ever before. Films released abroad regularly collects as much, if not more than those released in India, thanks mainly due to the huge Indian Diaspora. The film makers know that to satisfy this audience, who has grown up on a steady diet of Hollywood movies, they will have to travel the off beat path of film making. Also the awareness of the Indian audience too has increased due to the accessibility of western movies via the numerous movie channels available here.

The recent movie Nishabdh is a prime example of the changing face of Bollywood. The movie which deals with the story of a 60 year old man’s love for an 18 year old is bold as well as daring by Indian values and conventions. Can anyone have imagined this movie being made some 5 years back?

These are interesting times in Bollywood. Even though we still have a long way to go in dealing with controversial subjects objectively in our movies, we seem to be moving in the right direction. Let’s hope we would continue in the same vein and deal with sensitive topics in a most sensible way.