She likes him, he knows it! Then, why did she leave? Why was she so maddeningly deceptive? What was the secret hidden behind those innocent black eyes of hers? What was she concealing?
He knows the pain which was always there inside her, long before he had started wondering what had caused it. It was that something that made her a puzzle which she was. But what was it?
These unanswered questions confront Amar to the point of madness.He obsessively searches for the answers. But some questions could have been better left unanswered.
In the end, when all the questions are answered, he realizes that behind Meghna’s look of pure innocence, beneath her beautiful exterior, there is hatred strong enough to kill thousands of innocent people.
Within her, is a bomb waiting to explode, for she is a trained terrorist on a mission to cause an attack, an attack on the Independence Day parade, where she is selected to be the suicide bomber.
He also realizes that he is already too late to convince her out of her belief in terrorism. For her belief has the horror of her past to feed on and grow in to dark vengeance.Though defeated he doesn’t give up. ‘Take me along with you’he says.
In the last scene, nothing much is being said between the two than a few heart felt words, she accepts what she had been denying; she accepts that she loves him just before they silently agree to embrace death together.
Mani Ratnam the director, like all great directors, usually has the complete control of the audience.He knows exactly when to make his audience laugh and when to make them cry. His style is so peculiar that you can feel it in almost most aspects of his films.
But the usual Mani Ratnam touch was missing in this movie.Not something that typical Mani’s fans had expected. This was one of Mani’s honest efforts, rather than the customized ones like Alaipayuthey. (I do like Alaipayuthey.)
But if you have watched all movies of Mani you can guess rightly at which scene he had wanted you to feel romantic or happy or sad. In other words, you can see his typical trade mark on each scene. But ‘Dil Se’ was different from all of Mani’s other efforts.
It was more like Amar and Meghna talking in their natural style of talking, rather than in typical Mani’s style.
The scenes were more like meeting a man whose life has taken a wild upside down turn.The audience get to meet Amar who is doing things he can justify to nobody, like accepting Meghna in to his house and not losing hope for getting a positive sign from her, while on one side he is just engaged to another girl.
We find Amar in a messy situation; all because he had decided to help Meghna who had been a completed mystery, who had rejected him, who had once used him and had ran away from him, who was using him yet again, in a way which was dangerous to his family, his sanity and his life.
We see him face the peak of confusion, as he discovers Meghna’s secret. We see him while he is earnestly trying to make Meghna understand the terrorism is not the solution to her terrors of the past. But Meghna deceives him yet again; he is arrested, and then released only to find himself just a few seconds away from death.
The scenes that follow show us an injured and terrified Amarwho reaches home, where the CBI interrogates him aggressively. He is injected a doze of sleep inducing pills. But, he has no stop Meghna from killing herself and taking the lives of innocent people along.
He escapes. But the effect of the sleeping pill makes him fall in to ditch. Then sleep over powers him. Finally after some more struggle he manages to reach the place where Meghna is and then the dramatic climax.
These scenes involve no explicit explanations or justifications; the director just uses the short crisp sentences and the actor’s facial expressions to reach the audience.But unfortunately, it reached only a selected few audience, who claim that this movie to be one of Mani’s best, while the others claim it to be one of SRK’s worst hamming efforts.
I am one of the former. I love everything about this movie. I couldn’t find a single fault, even after watching it several times. It is really painful to read a negative review on a movie like ‘Dil Se’.
This is definitely one of best performances of SRK.And I consider his performance in this movie to be far better than his cry baby act in movies like Mohabatein, Kuch Kuch hota hai, K3G, Chalte Chalte, etc, etc.
Manisha’s equally good.I am surprised when people say that Preityhas acted well. I would rather say that she looks well and fits in to the role of the naughty, talkative girl with ease.She is more of herself. But it is not odd as her character needs nothing much. Almost everybody in the movie had acted well. One has to watch it to experience it and to appreciate it.
Needless to say, the music is excellentand has some of the best compositions of ARR. I get to live in the feel of the movie every time I listen to it.
Be it ‘Satrangi re’, or ‘Dil se re’, or ‘Hey Ajnabee’’, the conceptualization, the choreography, the enactment all are all superb.
But for reasons I can’t understand, this movie wasn’t a commercial success.
May be it was too much of a cryptic heart talk…
