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I'd start out here with some brief summation of Ram Gopal Varma, or of Amitabh Bachchan, or of "Indian cinema, as a whole" — something generally "introductory" — but I'd rather just get this out immediately: Nishabd is one of the finest films I've seen in some time. It also features one of Amitabh Bachchan's career's best performances. Quite a lot said, but none of it without merit. So, the "verdict" given, read on if you wish to know how I came to my sweeping, yet accurate, conclusion.
I should perhaps begin by correcting the misconception that a significant number of persons (who have not yet seen the movie) seem to be holding in regard to Nishabd: The film is not, by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, a "re-interpretation" of Vladimir Nabokov's book, Lolita. Lolita was sexual and wry; its "protagonist," an aggressive, psychologically "flamboyant" man who was willing to go to indefensible extents to bone a pre-adolescent girl for whom he couldn't hide his boner. By contrast, Ram Gopal Varma's Nishabd is the story of a conceivably "typical," "well" man, into whose life, one day, walks a cocksure, flippant young woman who excites him and rejuvenates him — who, slowly but eventually, works her way into his sentiments — and of the consequences that this all has on his life. It's the story of an older man who falls for a younger woman: The topic is universal and plausible enough not to have to be pinned on any former artisitic work, not in need to be deemed an "inspired-by" piece.
The topic of Nishabd, indeed, is both universal and easily accessible. Yet, it's one that causes a great deal of friction and controversy whenever it is brought up, and has perhaps thus not been explored to death by filmmakers prior. This is both freeing and frightening, no doubt, for Varma, as he's left quite free to do just "what" he wants, but quite limited, as well, in being able to look to others to see exactly what has "worked," and what has not. As much can go right, then, as can go wrong; fortunately, not much ever really goes wrong.
Any movie is two things: what you see, and what you hear. I'll admit that, at first, I feared that Varma would subject me to the same loud, inappopriate aural assualt to which he did in his eariler venrture, Sarkar: drums beating, voices hollering, strings being violently and unforgivingly plucked, et cetera. Looking up at the screen, I saw the livid tone encompass the frame, and assumed that the next hour and forty-five minutes or so would present me with the same dull, artsy-fartsy tripe that had Varma's failed, Naach. Curiously, about twenty minutes into Nishabd, I forgot to even reprimand myself for my cruel negativity. I was too enthralled, instead, by just how fittingly and flowingly everything had been stitched together by my director. The blues, the scenery, the camera angles; the music — it was all just working so well. Not only was Nishabd dawning on me as a "technical" acheievement, however.
Any phenomenal movie is only as good as its actors. Nishabd is a film that rests, very largely, on the commercially-inexperienced, nubile shoulders of Jiah Khan. If Lolita was a story about a man's actions toward a girl, then Nishabd may be seen as a movie about "Jia"'s affects of "Vijay." Jia is the aggressor; Jia is the cause of events' transpiring; Jia is the girl who causes and drives the plot, and so very much, indeed, rests of Jiah Khan's ability to portray Miss Jia. Initially, I thought the film would be doomed, as I could stand neither Jiah Khan nor her cocksure, flippant, seemingly typically-unnecessarily "pissed off" rendition of Jia. As did the score and the blue filter grow on me, so, too, did the aptness of Jia and her traits. I shortly fell to realize that I wasn't meant to be fond of Jia; she didn't exist for me to fall in love with. The purpose of Jia was to fly into Vijay's life and tie him in his rapture, and I soon accepted that she, as played, was wholly capable of honoring this task. Jia challenged, excited, and rejuvenated Vijay; as he, in his own words, put it, she "took him away from nearing death." As such, Jiah Khan did everything she should have done, and then whatever more was needed to make it believable. Varma was wise not to venture too far into making her just an element to push the plot, as well. As are all the characters in his work, Jia, too, is a realized, tangible human being: more annoying than sweet, but not at all cold and heartless, either.
Revathi and Rukhsar get the two "smaller" parts, but neither's presence goes at all unfelt. The former is pitch-perfect as Amitabh's wife. Again, owed to the direction and the writing, as well as to the sheerly impressive performance, Revathi comes off as an entirely sympathetic human being. She doesn't blow her gaskets to screaming, deafening music (as do characters in far too many Indian melodramas); she doesn't take an abrupt, unconvincing dislike to Jia at the most oppurtune of moments in the script; she doesn't react to Vijay's actions as only the "part-in-a-play wife" would. She is what one would expect a woman in her (character's) situation to be: kind and restrained, followed by unconsolably horrified and grief-stricken. Likewise, Rukhsar — who's given a decent bit to do post-intermission — is everything she should be as Vijay's daughter. No insipid, cracking voice screaming "I hate you! I hate you!" through a flurry of menthol-induced tears; no storming out of one room and into another to weep atop a perfectly-fluffed pillow — just disbelief and ineffable despair.
Amitabh Bachchan is so magnificent that his name needs to start off a new paragraph (well, Revathi and Rukhsar, also, did that, but you get the point). Earlier this year, Vidhu Vinod Chopra couldn't stop raving about Bachchan's "career's best": his film's eponymous protagonist, "Eklavya." It was a very good performance, and it was a good movie, and neither was anything more. Ram Gopal Varma has said relatively little about Nishabd, and not much more regarding Amitabh's work in the film, and — not even having given Bachchan a brand-spankin' new car before the Page-3 columnists, all — has come up with not only a sublime film, but has given us one of Amitabh Bachchan's finest, most memorable performances in some time. Anytime a film or an actor is great, it makes every film, every performance of that actor, that came before seem mediocre, inferior by comparison. Nishabd has the fortune of being one of these types of films, and Bachchan's work as Vijay is the type that almost makes one forget that one has already loved Bachchan as "Vijay" so many times before, in so many films past, and makes one discover his amazing talent and unparalleled skill all over again. Nishabd's "Vijay" is not Agneepath's, "Vijay Dinanath Chauhan" or Black's, "Devraj Sahai." Those are both great roles (the former, the best performance ever, by anyone — I'm sticking to that), but they're great in a different way, in an "acting" way. Nishabd's Vijay is the sort of performance you see and wonder about: "It was great, but it wasn't really acting... was it?" It's just so damned real, so fucking believable, that one forgets that Amitabh is, indeed, performing. He's not a photographer; he's not an atheist; he's not actually pleading the case of a man aged sixty years' being in love with a woman aged eighteen: he's acting, only he's just doing a mind-bogglingly astounding fucking job. Easily, this is one of Bachchan's best "post-Mohabbatein" films and performances. In fact, perhaps his work in Aks is the only other from this era that I'd place alongside his work in Nishabd. Now, as I said, every time one sees something truly great, one is momentarily compelled to deem "crap" all that came before it, to forget how positively one felt about the other "great" stuff that one saw not too long ago. I just got back from the theater, and I'll probably grant Khakee and Dev and Deewaar (the movies, and Amitabh therein), and all the others worthy, their just deserts soon enough. For the moment, however, Bachchan, and his true greatness in Ram Gopal Varma's Nishabd, have just left me a tad spellbound.
Altogether, Nishabd is an excellent bit of celluloid achievement. It doesn't endorse paedophilia or propel immorality, or do any of the other crap that people have been accusing it (without, of course, having watched it [they said the shit before the film even came out for the critics to review]) of doing. It's a smart, tight, as-close-to-perfection-as-any-movie-should-ever-wish-to-come piece of filmmaking. And if that doesn't do it for you, just go to watch it for Amitabh Bachchan: it'll be worth it.
*One disappointment: "Rozana Jiye," brilliantly and captivatingly sung by Amitabh Bachchan, is not actually anywhere in the film. Watch it as many times as you want in the promotions of the movie, because it's not even played over the ending credits, as are so many songs, nowadays, in Hindi films. Yes, the tune is used as a letimotif throughout the picture, but the actual song makes no appearance. The positive side of that? It benefits the film. The song doesn't make sense at the very end, and is even less fitting at the beginning. It could have been thrown in somewhere near the later part of the second half, but — reasonably "appropriate" though it might have been — it still would have felt unnecessary and pace-slackening. I'll give Varma this much: It takes guts and conviction to leave out a song that good just to make a movie that's closer to his vision. For having those guts and that conviction, I sincerely applaud him. I only hope that the number is available on the DVD release of the movie.
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I am so tired of people writing amateur stuff on the movie.....and the negative reviews from the critics are mostly based on the fact that the physical aspect of the relationship is not focussed on......other than that they are all praise for it, especially the performances, yet they still give it a low rating.....! My friends have even said that AB's performance is better than black....and that says alot and i am hoping to catch the movie this weekend coz it only opens up this weekend........