For all of the kids who grew up during the 90s, hindi cinema
represented two stark possibilities. One would be the ideal family sugar
saccharine entertainers and the other would be crude masala movies which stuck
to the “Formula”. In the middle of this clutter where you cant tell one film
from another came Mani Ratnam’s ground breaking Tamil movies Roja and Bombay
which blew cinema lover’s minds in their dubbed versions. Calling him an auteur
would be an understatement as watching his work was like a slap in the face for
all those who felt good story telling and water tight writing doesn’t get good
box office so they needn’t be there.
During 1998 when I was a 13 year old and Kuchh Kuchh hota
hai became the cult sensation for an entire generation, I was slowly getting
sold on that very idea of movies. Movies need to entertain, family movies are
an escape from real life, hindi cinema music sells when it caters to populist
tastes & SRK is THE loverboy and that’s what he is best at. It was during
this time when one of those evenings, the 15 sec teaser of Dil Se began airing.
The teaser began with A R Rahman’s soul stirring aalaap of Dil Se and fast cut
shots of SRK and Manisha running with explosions around and mountains and
before you could make head or tail of what you saw, the teaser ended. That was
something I had never ever felt in my life. The only word that described what I
felt was “Exhilaration”. I couldn’t believe the sound my ears were listening
to. I couldn’t believe the visuals my eyes were looking at. What struck me
right away was, this was SRK who was playing a fluffy college kid dancing
around young girls looking half his age and still making the whole film
watchable and out of the blue he sticks his neck out and prepares to blow
everyone’s minds with an absolute antithesis of the conventional “Bollywood
love story”.
Next thing I knew I waited with bated breath for the audio
cassette of the film. For some reason I just could not take the visuals out of
my mind. The cassette released and I immediately played it. The album started
with the rambunctious Chhaiyya Chhaiyya, went mellow with Ae Ajnabi, became
soul stirring with Dil Se Re , turns sexually charged with Jiya Jale &
finally rounds out as intense and mystical with Satrangi re. I listened to the
whole album in one go and I was hooked. Never before had I felt so many things
at one time. I was jumping, happy, thoughtful, sad, scared, anxious, spiritual,
empty all at one time. No other album had ever messed with my head, the way
this one did. The sound, the words, the arrangement were unbelievable and I
became obsessed with following the movie and finding out whatever I could about
it. I stuck to TV Channels which aired clips from the film, interviews with the
stars and Mani Ratnam. I remember SRK saying in one of those interviews, Dil Se
is a bollywood love story told in the most “unbollywood” kind of manner and it
pushes the envelope. In Hindsight it described the experience beautifully.
Because nothing could have prepared me for what I felt when
I saw it.
Dil Se begins on a rainy night somewhere in the North East
where an AIR program executive is trying to catch a train. On that stormy night
he meets Meghna and is instantly besotted. He tries everything to get her to
speak and finally when she speaks his adrenaline sky rockets. She says ,”ek cup
garam chai”. Now its not too much dialogue but the way Mani Ratnam sets this
scene up coupled with the sound design and Rahman’s background score kicking
in, there is a world of emotions conveyed within that itself. The scene ends
with SRK rushing back with the tea and watching Meghna board the train with 2
strangers, but he cant do anything about it. As the train starts moving, he
shouts “Oyee” and Meghna immediately looks back and that’s the end of “duniya
ki sabse chhoti prem kahani” or so we thought. In 15 minutes Mani Ratnam set up
his main characters and took the audience on a mystical ride and still kept
room to tell his story. I knew then and there that this is not going to be what
I had been fed as movies till that point.
For a pure cinematic experience, Dil Se was filled with
gooseflesh inducing moments that kept coming from the word go. As the movie
progressed, Mani Ratnam kept those moments coming in and went on laying the
foundation of the screenplay brick by brick. As SRK determinedly pursues Meghna
and she keeps resisting his advances the audience slowly is getting ,that there
is more to this than it looks on the surface. For example, who is Meghna and
why does she freeze every time she sees SRK. Who were the people she boarded
the train with? Is SRK a psycho coz his behaviour can be called borderline
stalking but he isn’t necessarily harassing her? Too many questions and we
haven’t crossed the first 30 mins yet.
The film moves ahead and SRK finds out where Meghna lives
and proposes to her without a care in the world. Meghna tells him she is
already married. SRK out of guilt wants
to apologise to Meghna and ends up getting beaten up by those two men he saw
her board the train with. SRK recovers and finds out that Meghna doesn’t stay
at the same place anymore and used to make calls to Ladakh. He goes there to
cover the Ladakh festival where he sees the Army fire upon a supposed
terrorist. In the ensuing chaos he again sees Meghna and starts following her.
He meets her on the bus she is sitting in where she calls SRK her husband when
questioned by an Army officer. SRK jokes around but now is intrigued by this
woman who is turning out to be something else completely.
Their bus breaks down and SRK out of sheer frustration asks
her about her name and who is she exactly? Meghna doesn’t give in and SRK in a
moment of madness kisses her forcefully and gets pushed back. They both reach a
Gompa with another group of people and are waiting for the night to get over.
Meghna sees SRK smoking and sitting alone and asks him to come inside as a
storm is on the horizon. SRK mocks her for being many people at once. Meghna
violently hits SRK and tries to resist him. SRK realises to his horror that she
can’t breathe and asks her if she has had such an experience earlier. He tells
her to cry her heart out and not to stop herself and finally Meghna calms
herself down.
By this time the relation between SRK and
Meghna is established and the audience is slowly induced into a false sense of
mystique. A lot of people I spoke with felt that there is no structure to this.
It felt like random scenes put together and there is no definite direction that
the story was taking till this point. To me personally, this whole portion was
haunting to say the least. The backdrop of never ending landscapes that Ladakh
represented filled me with this feeling of hollowness and for the longest time
I did not like to see this place. It made me very uncomfortable. For some
reason I felt like I was on some wild goose chase and wherever I go I would just
fall short as it was vast nothingness where I could touch or feel nothing.
The story moves from here where SRK and
Meghna strike a rapport and fall asleep one night. The next morning when SRK
wakes up, he realises to his dismay that Meghna has left again and this time
with a message on sand.
From this point onwards Dil Se, shifts
gears and turns into a dramatic thriller as Mani Ratnam chooses to gobsmack the
viewers with a killer revelation of Meghna being part of a revolutionary group
who are planning something big during Republic Day celebrations on the 50th
anniversary of India’s independence. The transition is done so smoothly that
the audience is left with no time to ponder as to what all has led them to this
point.
Dil Se.. is a treasure trove of “moments”
which remain unforgettable till date. Santosh Sivan had never shot frames with
such fluidity. The deliberate ambiguity that was written into the screenplay
was beautifully played out on screen through Sivan’s magical lens and the magic
that SRK and Manisha Koirala conjured up. If thought of simply, Dil Se is
classic Mani Ratnam where a topical subject serves as the background for an
intense love story. But where Roja & Bombay were fairly straight forward,
Dil Se takes the audience on a mystical journey and unravels its core layer by
layer. Once the revelation comes through, it ratchets up enough tension and
momentum to leave the audience gasping with a shocking ending.
Dil Se’s credits roll reads like the who’s
who of masters. Produced by Shekhar Kapoor, Ram Gopal Varma & Mani Ratnam,
Music by Rahman, Editing by Suresh Urs, Cinematography by Santosh Sivan,
Dialogues by Tigmanshu Dhulia. Not to mention an astounding cast comprising of
SRK, Manisha Koirala, Sanjay Mishra, Aditya Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi
Chakraborty, Mita Vashisht and a sparkling debut by a certain Preity Zinta. The
test of any great film is how well it ages and whether the elements hold up or
not. Dil Se gives me something new everytime I watch it. The haunting
background score with Sukhwinder Singh’s awe inspiring version of the poem
“Sitaaron se aage jahaan aur bhi hain… abhi ishq ke imtehaan aur bhi hain”.
This one line sums up the whole movie.
For the first time in mainstream hindi
cinema the concept of the 7 stages of love was depicted by a film maker. SRK is
shown traversing through these which are Hab, Uns, Ishq, Aqeedat, Ibaadat,
Junoon, Maut. The final 10 minutes where SRK confronts Meghna are arguably the
most powerful 10 minutes ever shot and can still give anyone goosebumps.
Its been 20 years since it released.
Everyone associated with it or anyone who saw it went on their own journeys in
life, but nothing could ever replace this one milestone ever. Whenever the
history of hindi cinema is written Dil Se will need to be mentioned as the
actual game changer which threw every rule book out of the window and wrote a
new cinematic language. Its my go to movie to restore my faith in cinema when
it is repeatedly shaken by what we regularly now get in the name of cinema.
Some movies outlive everything and take a
life of their own. Dil Se..
