Of Lust and Love. Review on Nishabd

Trust sitcoms to come up with ounces of blatantly obvious wisdom any day. In an episode of ‘The war at home’, the voluptuously sexy Hillary Gold(played by Kaylee Defer) argues with her parents that she has a lot to offer besides her good looks only to be admonished by her father, Dave Gold(Michael Rapaport) who says something to the effect of ‘Well, get this. Guys aren’t exactly going to go out with you to hear your theories on quantum physics’. Of course, Vicky Gold, the mother, hurriedly covers up for her husband, consoles her daughter and sends her away to her room. But that is when the most instructive exchange of the scene happens. After Hillary is off the screen, in response to his wife’s accusing stare, Dave defends himself, ‘What, do you disagree with me?’ to which Vicky says, exasperated, arms flying above her head, ‘Of course not, but you cannot say that to her face!’

Now I know this is a sitcom, and all it is supposed to do is to be funny(which it does), but I couldn’t help thinking there was more than a grain of truth to it. It seemed to capture accurately and succinctly, in a space of two minutes, not only the fundamental differences between the sexes in terms of what they think about ‘the act’, but also how much we delude ourselves into thinking sex is not that important. At some point in our culture, love became a sum total of platonic interactions like exchanging flowers, having deep conversations and sharing experiences together. Sex just became a logical outcome; it had to happen as a matter of course, but it is never to be actively pursued. So much has this thinking gone to our heads that anyone that doesn’t bother hiding his sexual side is very quickly labeled a pervert.

Let me tell you something. A guy will hardly ever ask a girl out if he is not physically attracted to her. It simply does not happen. No matter how electrifying the chemistry, no matter how great the experiences they share, if a guy thinks a girl is ugly, he won’t harbor romantic thoughts towards her. It is no coincidence that it is the good-looking girls that have all the attention, all the boyfriends, all the popularity, not because – as Dave Gold said – their theories of quantum physics are intellectually stimulating, but because of the simple reason that they are hot. So to talk about ‘lust and love’ as if they are mutually exclusive is to commit a grave fallacy, for lust is one of the foremost things that make love – at least romantic love, as opposed to parental love and ‘friendly’ love – complete.

Where Ram Gopal Verma faltered with Nishabd was that he bought into this popular, post-modern version of love as a giant, pink fluff of unadulterated candy floss. Any sixty year old man, with or without a passion for photography, who sees a sexy eighteen year old girl drenching herself with a garden hose will find his pulse racing and his blood boiling with desire. Vijay(Amitabh Bachchan), in contrast, could only apparently think of her as a specimen waiting to be photographed; beautiful, yes. But sexy, no.

This is the fundamental difference between Nishabd and American Beauty. Lester Burnham(Kevin Spacey) lusted unashamedly after his daughter’s cheerleader friend without so much of an inkling to have a ‘meaningful relationship’ with her, and Angela(Mena Suvari) was driven by the sole ‘kick’ it gave her to see a married, forty-something man so obviously obsessing about her. There were no deeper motivations, no complicated theories about why they liked each other, and that is what made them despicable in our eyes, horrible even, but ultimately that is what made them believable. While watching the movie, you almost felt that either of those characters could have so easily been you. For a man, no matter what his age, who does not get turned on by a young and beautiful eighteen year old simply does not – and never will – exist. Show me one and I will show you a flying pig.

So if RGV had only made Vijay see what all of us could see, i.e. Jiah is a sexy bombshell, then the movie would have been much more believable. But instead, we have scene after scene after scene showing Vijay and Jiah going on photo-shoots, talking photography, and basically doing everything non-sexual you can think of two people doing. And all this time, Jiah is giving Vijay a full view of her thighs in every possible angle, but no, our man Vijay just cannot see her in a sexual light. Heck, even when Jiah scratches his leg suggestively under the dining table when the family is having dinner together, all Vijay could think of was to laugh uncontrollably. I mean, is he a moron or something? Doesn’t he know when a girl is coming on to him?

If Verma’s confusion on whether to be brutally honest or to play along with the Indian sensibilities was one of the reasons this movie failed to connect, another one is because the writing simply wasn’t up to scratch. I have always been a fan of dialogues in Verma movies in that they are nice and crisp and realistic, but this one is supposed to be a love story, done the Indian way. If it had to have any hope after the faulty footing Verma started it off on, it needed some good dialogues to make us feel that there is an emotional connection between the protagonists. But all they could come up with was particularly inane stuff like, ‘Do you know why the sky is blue?’ ‘Tell me’ ‘Because I didn’t like it red so I painted it blue’. Umm, okay. Besides, what does ‘take light’ mean anyway? Shouldn’t it be something grammatically correct, like ‘take it easy’ or something? And the characters keep repeating it over and over again, making u cringe every time you hear it. Once, Jiah and Ritu actually have a small argument of sorts, ‘Take light’, ‘You take light’, ‘No you take light’ and so on and so forth. Now that was torture.

Amitabh Bachchan seems to have fallen into a set pattern of expressions, diction and voice modulation no matter what role he plays. I saw this effect even in Black where he was supposedly playing this old man dying on the streets but all I could see was Amitabh Bachchan. Even in this movie, you will be forgiven if you don’t really see Vijay. Jiah Khan managed to hold the viewer’s attention(admittedly quite admirably) only because of her propensity to show off her luscious body. It would be interesting to see what she can do if she has a less ‘revealing’ role. Revati and Nasser were strictly adequate. But Shraddha Arya delivered a beautiful performance as Ritu, Vijay’s daughter.

Ram Gopal Verma was once asked why his heroines are almost naked in most of his movies. His reply was a terse ‘Because I am a guy’, which, when translated into Telugu(the language he gave the answer in) became terser, because it ended up being only two words long. I admire such honesty in a man, and I only wish he could have been more honest with this movie rather than trying to please the masses. But either way, watch it for the short flashes of realism you find here and there, for the brilliant photography, and for debating with yourself about the issue the movie handles. If you are looking for something else, don’t bother, because you won’t find it.