Sick, depraved, perverted, etc. etc. The criticism of Nishabd flew thick and fast. It amused me. What was so wrong with an older man and a younger woman falling in love? OK, 40 years between the two was a bit of a stretch for the imagination, but love never followed anybody’s rules, and the film, (especially to somebody who as a 10 year old hero-worshipped her 20something cousin, and grew up to marry him) seemed to be the perfectly unconventional love story.
I should have paid more attention to Moviezombies review. I usually do, but curiosity, and the chance to catch up with friends I hadn’t seen in ages (all Amitabh fans) propelled me on to watch what I discovered was a laughably bad film.
Here’s the story in short (if anybody still doesn't know!) - older man falls for daughter’s friend, and is ready to sacrifice his family consisting of one shrewish wife, and one just like any other daughter for the object of his new-found love/lust. Here’s my take on the movie.**First the good - the acting is good, and the locales stunning. Next the bad - poor screenplay and terribly shallow characters.
Other issues - The age difference - First of all, there’s nothing revolutionary about love/marriage between an old(er) man and a young girl - not in our culture (in case one is tempted to blame the foreign hand again for all our ills) and not in our movies, so to those whose objection is based on that idea, let me borrow KK's words from HTPL - *hota hai, * get over it!
He had a loving family which he just blew off for this...this... *&#%^$# - Loving family? Maybe there was love, but everybody was too caught up in their own worlds to see anybody else. When a woman gives up her interests, stops looking after herself, takes her man for granted, and makes the house, child, and television the focus of her attention, she cannot blame her man completely for losing interest in her. The same logic applies to men too. To sustain a relationship, one needs to constantly work at it - it’s bloody difficult, and while being married for years brings in some levels of comfort (a good thing), too much of it can also spell disaster for the relationship.
My problems with the movie were different. If the director was going to show that the young and nubile Jiah was falling in love with a man old enough to be her grandfather, I wanted to see and understand why. I have a friend whose 60 something father anybody could very easily fall in love with. He is full of fun, laughter, and energy. He is hugely successful in business, can dance the night away and still wake up at 5.30 to kill his opponent on the tennis court, takes his wife to classical music concerts (shares in her interests) and flies off to the Carribean to watch cricket (holds on to his interests) and so on. He is a great combination of charm, responsibility, wealth, intelligence and power - an intoxicating combination at any age.
If Vijay was a character like that, all would have been well, but he is a dull, lethargic, bowed down man with few attractive qualities - his passion for photography being the only saving grace. And then the camera adds to the character’s bland personality by focussing all the time on his lined, saggy, baggy face with that trademark ugly white beard - a definite turn off. I wanted to hand AB a razor and some anti wrinkle cream with user instructions printed in large type! Whatever happened to the concept of aging gracefully, and what happened to the make-up man?
Unfortunately Ramu seems to have thought that lustful shots of naked legs would distract the viewers so no questions would be asked - not about the idea of the love story - after all, we are too dumb to understand that, but about the way the characters remain caricatures. Too bad, Ramu, but the audience has some questions for you.
So what attracts Jiah to Vijay - the fact that she could be subconsciously looking for a father figure? The fact that she is bored out of her mind, and wants some excitement in her life, even if it means seducing her friend's father while enjoying the above mentioned friend’s hospitality? Hmmm... shades of a psychotic character here? So why wasn’t this angle explored? Why was there no character building at all?
And what attracts Vijay to Jiah?It's easy enough to understand that an older man would want to cling on to what makes him feel young. And sure, anyone who was not blind could have seen that Jiah was a very attractive girl - but to have us believe that a man was so overcome with lust simply by looking at long legs or lollipops being suggestively rolled between lush lips, or so taken up with the interest shown in him and his work, or so desperate to feel young again that he could ask the daughter he seems to care about to leave home, and tell the wife who runs his whole life their marriage was over, was asking a bit too much of the audience. Is a man, even one blinded by lust ever so foolish?
And the picturisation of Jiah - clad in trashy, skimpy clothes (in the cold of Munnar, poor thing), with what little she is wearing falling off her body half the time, lips bitten to death, the lollipops, the cream licked off fingers, and that scene where she pulls the hose up between her legs and has water gushing all over her - enough to make a person groan with sympathetic embarrassment - Ramu, what age group is that audience you had in your mind? 13?
Like the picturisation of ‘sexy’, the music of Nishabd too is in your face and grates on your nerves. And Aftab Shivdasani as the boyfriend who couldn’t see beyond his own wants and desires - Ramu should have had Jiah or Vijay quietly bash his head in with a garden gnome, and give Nishabd the ‘murder mystery’ twist- Would have gotten rid of the character and given the film an interesting angle in one blow! Ramu’s brains have very obviously taken a sharp dive southwards, and with it has gone his ability to make good, engrossing, and believable cinema.
In an interview the real Jiah says - she fell in love with Amitabh and adds “I have always said I will fall in love with someone who will make me laugh. Mr Bachchan has done that. He is everything that I wish for in a guy. Intelligent, humourous, magnetic and protective…” Vijay of Nishabd could have been all of that- instead he is simply a crashing bore.
Pity.Ps. One more question - That scene with the naked Jiah and the clothed Ritu romping about under the shower- what the heck was that about?
