Silsila: an affair to remember
While I return to posting on PFC after a long gap (when no one missed me), I wonder if I should be reviewing yet another movie. Fine, it’s not yet another movie. But RK has already written about it in depth. Is there anything more for me to pen? Maybe, there is….
I watched Silsila first in the mid-80s, when I certainly didn’t understand the movie beyond the point that there was an extra-marital affair. What I remember most is the eternal “Rang barse…“. Now, after about twenty years, I wanted to check out what people rave about and the famed Amitaabh-Rekha chemistry.
The movie is a strange mixed bag — fantastic acting, superb situations / dialogues and great songs / poetry floating alongside a loophole-filled screenplay and masala aberrations. As RK said, you need to remember the movie for the core and forget the rest. Now, some random thoughts:
- Besides the casting coup, if at all Amitaabh and Rekha did have an affair in real life, the way they acted along with Jaya Bachchan (nee Bhaduri) rendered me speechless. How did they get themselves to perform the way they did and how did Yash Chopra achieve it? Mind-blowing (as Amitaabh says)!
- What was that short scene between Jaya and Rekha? It stands out like a sore thumb in the otherwise mature handling of the situations and ultimately the scene didn’t contribute anything. Was it just a hyped-up wife-paramour confrontation sequence?
- In the one scene when Amitaabh confesses his affair to Jaya, her response is amazing. What a realistic actress we never got to full potential of!
- Rekha is silent, vulnerable and simmering. This is probably one of the movies which defined her image.
- Sanjeev Kumar has a cake-walk in one of his lighter roles.
- Amitaabh sheds his superstar image for the most part and shows once again that he was never an actor to be dismissed lightly.
- There seemed to be a hang-over of Kabhi Kabhie, especially with respect to poetry Of course, it also helped that both movies were packaged on the same DVD and I watched the other one just a couple of weeks ago.
- Yash Chopra’s overdose of Punjabi and fascination for Europe are well in place.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“Fantastic acting, superb situations / dialogues and great songs / poetry floating alongside a loophole-filled screenplay and masala aberrations.”
This is extremely well-put. The multiple car accidents – and the plane crash – add a jarring dose of masala to the otherwise introverted, contemplative nature of the story.
I’m not sure I agree, though, that it’s a light role for Sanjeev Kumar – actually I think he stole the show; he has such a gift for real and sensitive portrayal of emotional pain. The scene where he leaves Rekha at the airport – he’s so clearly afraid that he’s lost her, that she’ll be gone when he returns – is one of the saddest, loveliest scenes ever.
Carla: thanx for the appreciation. Regarding Sanjeev Kumar, he stole the show whenever he was there in a scene. But still, compared to his other roles, this is probably light for the great actor.
Yash Chopra:
randramble: thanks for reminding Silsila. Today is 69th Birth anniversary of Sanjeev Kumar.
But brother, Sanjeev Kumar is a treat in Silsila, If any other Indian actor (except Dilip saab, Kamal Hasan,Amitabh Bachchan) can bring those emotions on their face as SK has brought in the song Ran Barse Bheege Chunaria, where he finds AB and Rekha are flirting then these actors should be given Dada Saheb Phalke then and there!
Rekha’s role can be said as light in Silsila but then Silsila is story of romance outside the marriage and less of characters and this is different that AB, Jaya, SK and Rekha made it their film by their superb performances.
Great to hear from you, RK.
All: I’m not sure why my post gave the impression that Sanjeev Kumar wasn’t good in this movie. I just meant that it’s one of his lighter roles and he did it casually.
randramble: what I meant was that role of SK had fair share of emotions to portray. It was not a plain role. In the film, only AB’s role is of a active character, only he does something rest three charcaters just retaliate to his doings. But Sk and Jaya’s characters have shades. For Shashi Kapoor we can say that this was cake walk role for him. in AB’s films SK had bad role in Iman Dharm and easy role in Khuddar but in Silsila and Trishul he had shades to portray and in both he did it with full sincerity.
I dont agree with you friend when you say he played a light role casually.
The Restaurent scene where AB is expecting Rekha also and is obviously disapppointed when finds SK has come alone. SK and AB play a “support and gain height” game. Both support and challange each other to bring height in the role and many such scenes are there in the film.