This Day That Year: Subhash K Jha revisits Nishabd 18 years later and shares a throwback interview with Mr Amitabh Bachchan about the film.
Ram Gopal Varma’s Nishabd, with its pulsating but humane play of light and shade within the sprawling, gorgeous greenery of a tea estate, is the closest you’re going to come to the passion of a Renaissance painting in Hindi cinema.
Varma’s mastery over visuals, which tells a tale of reclamation and retribution, has never been in doubt. The qualities that have always made his cinema look unique have been applied to a theme that has so far remained forbidden to Varma’s range of vision.
In narrating a 60-year-old ‘happily’ married man’s sudden passion for his daughter’s 18-year-old friend, Ramu goes for the jugular. The luminous language of Nishabd makes you grope for new words to describe the experience of watching a film that unfolds like the petals of a wild but tender flower. Nishabd is a brooding look at an autumnal life that suddenly finds excitement. The eruption of passion is manifested in little things like the sprout of a gushing water fountain or the atypical laughter of a patriarch who has just discovered the clandestine pleasure of playing footsie under the table with his daughter’s friend.
The confusions, turmoils and playful expeditions into emotional areas that no Hindi film has dared to visit, makes this Varma’s most accomplished film to date. He leaves behind the gangsterism of Satya and the violence of Company. Never afraid to take risks, Varma plunges straight into a fear-filled heart of an aging man who suddenly experiences emotions that he never knew existed within him.
Both the director and the protagonist venture into unlit territory of bright, smothered passions with arresting aplomb. You’ve seen Varma ferret out a unique performance from Bachchan in Sarkar. Nothing prepares you for the flowing emotions that spill out of the superstar’s eyes, face, and entire being as he grapples with his uncontrollable feelings for the feisty Jiah.
In Nishabd, Varma has achieved that synthesis of time and experience that gives human relationships a spin of eternity. Technical soundness is, of course, a hallmark of Varma’s cinema. He applies his trademark technique – restless camera movements and unpredictable shot divisions – to a world far removed from the violence and horror of his earlier cinema.
Bachchan’s character convincingly goes into the recesses of the wounded human heart in search of the answer to that one question – what’s the purpose of our existence? According to Varma’s superb dialogue writer, Amrik Gill, it is happiness. That quest for joy, which we forfeit in our pursuit of day-to-day aspirations, is retrieved in this elegiac yet exhilarating film about re-discovering passion and disconnecting it with sex.
There are innumerable moments of unalloyed cinema in this sensuous treatise on forbidden passion. Bachchan’s lighter moments with the whimsical ‘Lolita’ of the new millennium are saucily grand.
It’s the smothered and sublime tragedy that he builds around his character – its journey from restrained amusement to a stunning slouch – that makes his performance exceptional.
Mr Bachchan’s chemistry with young Jiah (unarguably Varma’s best discovery to date) is so virile, vulnerable, tender, and yet invincible at the core.
A special word for Amar Mohile’s background score. It creates a new intimate idiom of expression, unifying the call of the human heart with nature and its most flawed creation – the human being. Nishabd elevates the traditional language of cinema to the plane of unrhymed poetry.
Recalling the experience, Mr Bachchan says, “Ramu had the entire cast and crew tuned in to the project. All of us were taken to Munnar to work under very quiet working conditions. We were the only people around, no visitors. There was not a single person around from outside the crew. That certainly enhanced the work atmosphere. It’s not as if one can’t work under pressure. But I wish we could work more often in the circumstances created in Munnar. It makes life a lot easier. We were doing at, an average, of 5-6 scenes a day. All credit to Ram Gopal Varma for thinking of this place and for his clarity of vision, which saved us a lot of time. He knew exactly what he wanted…in his mind and on paper. I think it was quite marvelously conceived. Those aware of the book and the film are expecting another Lolita. They thought Ram Gopal Varma was exploiting the same values that were there in the original material. But you must appreciate the honesty of the filmmaker. Even when Ramu was doing Sarkar with me, he was completely upfront about his intentions. He mentioned in the opening titles that he was inspired by The Godfather. Yet there was very little of Godfather in Sarkar. Likewise, the source of Nishabd was Lolita. I’ve faith in Ram Gopal Varma. He’s a very passionate filmmaker. He has an incredible memory for information on cinema. He can rattle off dates and names for films at random. He’s alert to every detail to every detail on filmmaking. The whole film is ready and edited in his mind when he comes on the sets. While doing one shot, he’d think it would be appropriate for another shot. He’d quickly ask us to do a dress change and take the shot. Knowing the kind of social taboos and norms we live with, thinking of Lolita did seem alarming. I was a little disbelieving when Ramu suggested it to me. When I read the script and saw his treatment of the script, I knew there was nothing to fear. Ramu is a serious filmmaker. And we must credit him with a fair amount of aesthetic sense. Jiya was very good! It was hard to believe this was her first time. She was very relaxed and natural. It was wonderful to have Revathi play my wife. With a restricted number of characters in a secluded area, we worked well together. That part of Kerala (Munnar) is very beautiful. I think Ramu wanted that kind of look. The kind of colour code used in Nishabd is unique. Another young girl, Shraddha, was working with Ramu for the first time. Just having all those youngsters around was such a learning experience.”
