Disappointing silence

The woman is brilliant. That is, she's brilliant considering three things, one, She's from the U.S.A, two, She's a newcomer and this is her first silverscreen appearance and three, she's just a kid!

The storyline is non existent. There is no story, as expected though. The whole film rides on the theme. There's nothing much supporting it. The story of a man falling in love with a girl less than a third of his age is too big a first statement for the director to attach something to it in the form of a well thoughtout story line, proper characterization of the supporting actors or even a thoughtful end to the story. Someone has to tell our man that silence is not a great medicine for all circumstances. The same silence that awed the audience in Sarkar seems overused throughout the movie and even thrust on the actors at certain places. Just like you shouldn't typecast an actor, you shouldn't typecast an art, in this case, the art of using silence to higlight emotions... at times it just doesn't fit.

Jiah Khan impresses alright. But the character is essentially flawed. She plays an estraged kid traumatised by the loss of a father and an extramarital relationship her mother is involved in. The fact that her attraction to Vijay could even be a daughterly inclination has been grossly overlooked to give the movie a 'Lolita' angle. It would hae been a more complete portrayal of the situation had that angle been explored in a couple of scenes.

The character of the wife and her brother looked really stiff. Except for the one places where she loses her cool, Vijay's wife is just another suspecting Indian woman who gives up everything for the family and expects the family to give up everything for her, in turn.

And finally, the trauma of a girl when she finds out about her father having an affair with her friend is also underplayed. There could be two reasons for it, either the person playing the role wasn't upto it or the role itself was weakened to highlight 'the other woman'. Eitherways, these are some points which could have been explored more at the expense of the long Nishabdh scenes which were meant for the audience to track the path of Amitabh Bachchan's tears as they roll down his cheek.

There's no point talking about the man himself for he's made a habit of surpassing all his previous performances in every new film he does and whether its weeping for a seperated wife in Baghban or shedding tears for an 18 year older lover in Nishabdh he does it with equal wizardry.

All said and done, Nishabh would have been a great watch had there been a little more shabdh in it.