| Product: |
Khamoshi (DVD) |
| Date: |
11/04/08 (90 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Good acting and interesting storyline
Disadvantages: Rajesh Khanna as the male lead
Khamoshi was released in 1969 and starred Rajesh Khanna and Waheeda Rehman with Nasir Hussain, Lalita Pawar and Iftekhar in supporting roles, with Dharmendra in a guest appearance. The film was directed by Asit Sen, produced by Hemant Kumar and written by Sampooran Singh Gulzar and Ashutosh Mukherjee. The film genre could be classed as a drama. Khamoshi was filmed entirely in black and white and ran for just over 2 hours. It is rated PG and the dialogue is entirely in Hindi.
PLOT
Dr Colonel Saab (Hussain) specialises in helping people with mental health problems recover. One of the main illnesses of the patients he treats is acute mania brought on by the lack of maternal love in their lives! Patient # 24 Arun Choudhury (Khanna) is admitted to the hospital and Nurse Radha (Rehman) is allocated to his care as she was successful with the previous patient # 24. Unfortunately Nurse Radha had become emotional involved with the previous # 24 and we start to see history repeating itself but how is it going to get resolved? Will it end happily ever after for the besotted nurse and manic patient? Or will it all end in tears?
ANALYSIS
Rajesh Khanna was Bollywood's darling hero in the late 60s and 70s. Personally I've always found him rather irritating to watch on screen and hearing about his antics in real life made me dislike him even more. Playing a manic depressive suited him to a tee as he got the chance to wander around looking lost and spouting romantic prose and nonsense to his heart's content. Do I sound harsh? Maybe so, it was all rather too mushy and unbelievable to me. I didn't buy him as a mental patient, he just came across as an annoying man who'd been spurned by his ex girlfriend and couldn't handle the rejection.
Waheeda Rehman was absolutely stunning in her role - she is a definitely considered one of Bollywood's most beautiful actresses of her era and she was an extremely talented actress too. Her character having had feelings for her initial patient #24, is reluctant to get too close to her new patient, but is constantly encouraged by her boss who I personally felt had mental issues himself. You see her as a happy go lucky pretty young nurse intent on doing a good job who fell in love with a patient who recovered and went on to marry his girlfriend and you see her falling into the same trap again except the second time she tries very hard to be aloof whilst the whole time her boss is trying to force her to get emotionally involved with the patient to motivate him to recover. It's almost sickening to watch at times but performed exceptionally well on screen.
Nasir Hussain is not someone I recall seeing in any other films - he played the authoritarian doctor role with ease and I felt myself disliking him more and more as the film progressed. He didn't seem to have any real morals and you really don't associated doctors generally with the kind of behaviour he portrays. I guess because the film was set in the 60s it makes one think about how mental health care has improved over the decades. And thank God it has. The doctor's behaviour throughout the film was rather unethical even though in his mind he only wanted the best for his patients even if it had to be at the expense of his own staff's mental well-being.
I can't tell you anymore about the story as I don't want to spoil the ending but it was quite a shocker to me and I really didn't think it would all end that way. I knew it was going to be a tear-jerker but I had honestly thought the ending would be quite different. It's definitely of the old school Bollywood film variety before it was common to copy Hollywood films and change the story here and there and throw some famous Bollywood stars in the pot and some romantic songs and there you have a hit on your hands. This film is a classic piece of Bollywood film-making and it's not all glitz and glam in the least. There are a few songs in the film, well placed and pleasant enough but quite haunting melodies generally to add to the suspense and tug at the viewers' heartstrings.
Asit Sen (the director) is a Bengali himself and had actually made this film originally in Bengali in 1959 (Deep Jweley Jai) and remade it for a wider audience with this version in 1969. I've also seen a relatively recent film called Kyun Ki which I felt was a remake of this film too (although the version I'm reviewing is far superior as far as I'm concerned).
There were only two songs during the film which were placed at relevant intervals so they didn't detract from the story. The playback singers for the film were Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar. I thought I'd also mention that the film won the 1970 Filmare Award for Best Cinematography - Black & White for Kamal Bose. I personally did feel that Waheeda Rehman should have received an award but alas, she didn't...
As I stated above the film is rated PG, I doubt that youngster would be in the least interested in watching the film although I wouldn't advise letting them watch it as some of the scenes in the hospital are quite painful to watch and could be disturbing for youngsters.
WHERE TO GET IT
You can pick up a DVD of the film from Amazon for £12.99 or from moviemail-online.co.uk for £9.74 or try your usual DVD rental source.
OVERALL
Overall I would give Khamoshi a strong 8 out 10 for being a decent and different type of Bollywood movie. I am not very keen on tearjerkers generally but the acting by Rehman was perfect and even though I'm not keen on Khanna generally, I did find his chemistry with Rehman quite good. If you like old fashioned films and can handle tragic love stories, then this is one for you.
NB: I have also posted this review on Ciao on the same username
Summary: Not your average glitzy Bollywood fare...
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