FILM REVIEW: SHABD (2005)
Director: Leena Yadav Bajaj
Producer: PNC
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Aishwarya Rai and Zayed Khan
Radio Sargam Rating: 3/10
Synopsis:
Shaukat Vashisht (Sanjay Dutt) is a Booker Prize winner and a winner of many other awards. If John Nash of The Beautiful Mind played with Numbers, Shaukat of Shabd dabbles with words. His room reflects his state of mind - cluttered and confused.
He tries to use to verbal diarrhoea of his maid (Sadiya Siddiqui) but it doesn't help much as she is too much of a chatterbox and does not give him enough ideas to write his book. He is under tremendous pressure to deliver as his last book has been a flop, and he wants something new.
He builds a character called Tamanna (desire) in his mind and then his wife steps in - the beautiful Antara (Aishwarya Rai) who is a teacher of fashion. A professor of photography Yash (Zayed Khan) has been wooing her and she at no time reveals to him that she is married.
Shaukat encourages this and tells his wife to carry on the story. Here he manipulates her to carry on a relationship with him and sits at home crying and feeling upset. At the same time, when he sees them together, he smiles thinking that his story is taking a new turn. Indeed, this man must have taken his entire characteristics from John Nash, because as a viewer, my beautiful mind is torn into smithereens. I do not understand what is happening. Here is one man who is manipulating his wife. Together, he and his wife are conning a third unsuspecting lover. Where is this entire negative story business taking us?
Antara again is a double-pronged sword. On one hand, she prefers to be a submissive wife who agrees to this ridiculous idea in the first place and secondly, she also goes ahead and gets into a casual fling with an unsuspecting younger man.
Critique:
Sanjay Dutt is a writer for the second time in his life and Shabd is not words' worth. Saajan did well, but in this film, he has too bad an idea to getting his wife to fall in love with another man and hence came up with a drastic idea. As bad as what the director wanted ... people to fall in love with her script and film and hence came up with a script that is too unconventional for one to digest.
Sanjay Dutt is a winner all the way. He lifts the film with his performance. He does well what the writer's words fail to describe.
Aishwarya Rai is a pleasure for any writer when it comes to describing beauty, but her performance fails to go beyond that. The actress is brilliant with her screen presence, agreed that no Bollywood actress can look as beautiful as her and it does seem that the cameraman Aseem Bajaj too fell in love with her while getting her down on lens, so what if he happens to be the director Leena's's husband. Maybe the story inspired him as well. Ash looks like magic on screen, but fails to create any kind of magic with her performance. The sexual chemistry between Aishwarya and Sanjay Dutt works a lot and ends up being a strong point.
But alphabetically, the film fails to click. We do not have any words to describe the good things about the film except the presence of Sanjay and Aishwarya. Zayed Khan has been completely miscast in the role of Yash. He does not look a professor from any angle.
The film has traces of Lars von Trier's Breaking The Waves and at times after Sanjay Dutt goes a bit loony, it reminds you of Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind. Pritish Nandy Communications have made Chameli, Popcorn Khao Mast Ho Jao among other films. And looking at this film, one just wants to say, popcorn khao, film bhool jao.
The film moves like a word let loose. It’s like a crossword so wrongly made that the words end up being cross with each other. They do not make sense after a while. Such a relationship sounds good in a book or maybe the script, but there is a slip between the pen and the screen. The film is too subtle and leaves the audience guessing at times. Such ideas do not work in cinema Leena. Leena has been a television serial maker and the incompetence shows in the way she has wasted a brilliant casting.
Reviewed by: Tony
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