SantaBanta News Bureau

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Jiah khan, Revathi, Shraddha Arya, Aftab Shivdasani, Rukhsar
Music: Vishal Bharadwaj, Amar Mohile
Lyrics: Munna Dhiman, Farhad, Sajid
Director: Ram Gopal Verma

The film comes with a tagline that reads 'Some love stories are never meant to be understood'. Nishabd certainly challenges the parameters of love. It's an experience you live with.

The film came out of a casual conversation between Ram Gopal Verma and Amitabh Bachchan and took the form of a film that really pushes the envelop as far as the story and the acting prowess of the protagonists go, specially the Big B who constantly surprises the audience as he tops his own performances yet again!

The film is set amidst tea gardens in a hill station. Amitabh Bachchan plays a wild life photographer in the film, settled into domesticity with a frumpy wife who is involved in mundane household activities. Amitabh's artistic soul, however, is very alive and kicking.

In waltzes Jiah Khan, the 18-year old temptress. She is a brash, spoilt teenager, who showers Amitabh with the attention that he has never experienced before. The fact that she is his daughter's friend doesn't stop Jiah from falling in love with the 60-year-old Amitabh and really going for him.

She's very upfront about what she wants and she wants him! Spoilt, petulant, a child of a broken marriage, Jiah is a sexy siren with a wild, untamed spirit!

Yet there are some moments of child-like naiveté she displays that makes her the alluring child-woman that Amitabh just cannot resist! Her petulance and passion are very alluring to him.

Nowhere does Ram Gopal Verma spoon-feed his audience. While it's easy to see why Jiah falls for Amitabh, the director lets his audience guess why the well-settled, complete Amitabh would fall so badly for the young Jiah that he would jeopardise his whole existence for her. Is it the anticipated thrill of intimacy?

Is it the suppressed apathy towards the wife who is a trifle boring? Is it just the feeling of youth and excitement that she generates in him? The fact that she makes him laugh and dance? Or just that her untamed poet's spirit and his sprit of an artist find a consonance?

At particular times, the film may appear to be too long and stretched out but this starts making sense when one realizes that the movie is essentially about loneliness. Amitabh's loneliness as well as young Jiah's!

Verma has the knack of getting the environment to speak. Here too, the very atmosphere becomes almost a protagonist, adding on to the depth of the film. There is a touch of gloom in the whole movie.

The film is perfectly cast! Jiah is extremely comfortable with her sexuality, flaunting it continually, as she constantly crosses and uncrosses her legs and displays a lot of well-shaped thigh. She sashays in and out of scenes with a confidence unusual in a debutante.

Rewathi's performance as Amitabh's wife whose security gets shattered is understated and adept. Shraddha Arya, the daughter who suddenly grows up when she sees her safe home threatened because her father has feelings other than expected of him, is excellent too.

Amitabh's is an awe inspiring performance! The emptiness in his eyes when he is shunned by his family, his sudden breaking out into uncontrollable laughter in the middle of the night, the movement in his eyes when he captures the images of Jiah playing in the water, getting all wet, are moments of magnificent acting.

He makes you came face-to-face with your hidden feelings. He makes you examine yourself and question whether you have the courage to go for what you really want. His bold acceptance of the fact that he loves the young girl jeopardises all that is safe around him but he makes the declaration nevertheless!

The film is a bold one but never oversteps the moral boundaries. One would have wished, though, that with such a bold theme, the end would have been different, a little more valiant, perhaps.