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Dil Se..
1998 Hindi-language romantic thriller film by Mani Ratnam From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Dil Se.. (lit. 'From the Heart..') is a 1998 Indian Hindi-language romantic thriller film written and directed by Mani Ratnam who produced it with Ram Gopal Varma and Shekhar Kapur. Set against the backdrop of Insurgency in Assam, the film stars Shah Rukh Khan and Manisha Koirala, while Preity Zinta makes her film debut in a supporting role. An example of parallel cinema, it is noted as the final installment in Ratnam's trilogy consisting of Roja (1992) and Bombay (1995).[3][4] The film's soundtrack album, composed by A. R. Rahman, sold six million units in India.[5]
Dil Se.. was screened at the Era New Horizons Film Festival and the Helsinki International Film Festival. Noted for its aspects of nonlinear storytelling, the film was moderately successful at the domestic box office; however, it was a major success overseas, earning $975,000 in the United States and £537,930 in the United Kingdom,[2] where it was the first Indian film to enter the top 10,[6] and it was also a hit in Japan.[7]
At the 44th Filmfare Awards, Dil Se.. received 10 nominations, including Best Actress (Koirala) and Best Supporting Actress (Zinta), and won 6 awards, including Best Female Debut (Zinta) and Best Music Director (Rahman). At the 46th National Film Awards, the film won two awards – Best Cinematography and Best Audiography, while also receiving a Netpac Award at the 49th Berlinale.[6][8]
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Plot
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Amarkant Varma (Shahrukh Khan) is a program executive for All India Radio, dispatched from New Delhi to cover festivities in Assam. On his way there, he meets a mysterious woman at Haflong Station, while waiting for the Barak Valley Express, whose beauty intrigues him. She ignores his attempts at conversation, and he sees her board the next train with three men.
Later, Amar reaches his destination and spots the same woman in Silchar. He again attempts to talk to her, but she says she cannot recall meeting him before. As part of his news reporting assignment, for covering the occasion of 50 years of India's independence, Amar interviews many citizens, and an extremist chieftain, who claims that the Indian Government and Indian Army is the reason behind mass human rights violations and poverty in the region. The chief states that the Liberationists do not wish to enter into any dialogue with the Indian government and justify their resistance in Northeast India.
A few weeks later, Amar describes his encounter with the woman over the radio, which she hears. He again spots her at a post office. He follows her and tells her that he is in love with her. She tells Amar she is married. Amar decides to apologise for making her uncomfortable, but she arrives with two men who beat him unconscious.
Amar learns that she lied about being married. He reaches her home and knows that she has left. He bribes the PCO owner at the post office into giving him her contact information, and learns that she is telephoning Ladakh. He travels to Leh, and while recording the Sindhu Darshan Festival, a suicide bomber is chased to death by the military. Amar spots the woman again, boarding a bus. While he tells the military that he is reporting on the festival, the woman uses Amar to her advantage, telling the military that he is her husband.
The bus breaks down, and the passengers are required to walk to the nearby village. Amar forces the woman to reveal her name: Meghna (Manisha Koirala). The two travel together, but the next day, Amar wakes to find Meghna gone. (It is later revealed that Meghna is part of the Liberationists group, which plans multiple suicide attacks in New Delhi at the upcoming Republic Day celebration.)
Amar returns home to Delhi, where his family has found a potential bride for him in Preeti Nair (Preity Zinta). Amar agrees to marry Preeti because he does not hope to meet Meghna again. On his date with Preeti, he spots one of Meghna's associates, Kim. Amar chases him down to Connaught Place, where the man runs into the police and kills himself with cyanide. The police relinquish the situation to the CBI. Meghna is also in Delhi, and requests that Amar help her get employment at Amar's office. (Meghna actually lives with Amar to escape from the CBI.) Based on eyewitness claims, Amar is now a suspect of the CBI. Amar questions Meghna's motives, and she reveals to Amar that her name is actually Moina. In her childhood, she was raped by the army men and sought liberation through her suicide attack on them.
Amar is again assaulted by Moina's associate and the terrorists. As he fights back, the terrorists receive a call from Moina. Amar grabs the phone and pleads with Moina to stop all this and marry him. Moina says it is too late, and presumes Amar is being killed. The CBI mistakenly identified Amar as part of the terrorist group and arrested him when he came home. They reject his claims of innocence and sedate him. The next day, Moina is ready for the suicide attack. Amar escapes from the CBI and tries to hold her back, expressing his love and pleading with her to live with him. As they embrace, the explosive vest Moina wears explodes, killing them both.
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Cast
- Shah Rukh Khan as Amarkant "Amar" Verma
- Manisha Koirala as Meghna / Moina
- Priya Parulekar as young Moina
- Preity Zinta as Preeti Nair
- Mita Vasisht as Mita
- Raghubir Yadav as Shukla
- Zohra Sehgal as Amar's grandmother
- Sabyasachi Chakravarthy as a terrorist
- Piyush Mishra as CBI Officer Arun Kashyap
- Gautam Bora as the terrorist group leader
- Krishnakant as a terrorist
- Aditya Srivastava as a terrorist
- Sanjay Mishra as a terrorist
- Anupam Shyam as a terrorist
- Manjit Bawa as a terrorist
- Shabbir Masani as a terrorist
- Arundathi Nag as Kanval Dev Burman, AIR station director
- Vineeta Mallik as Amar's mother
- B. M. Shah
- Gajraj Rao as CBI officer
- Sheeba Chaddha as Moina's sister
- Wasiq Khan
- Sameer Chanda as Tunda music shop dealer
- Janagaraj as a taxi driver
- R. K. Nair as Preeti's father
- Alka as Preeti's mother
- Shaad Ali in a cameo appearance as a citizen of Silchar
- Tigmanshu Dhulia as a man at the post office
- Malaika Arora as dancer in the song Chaiyya Chaiyya (special appearance)
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Production
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Filming began in December 1996, while Shah Rukh Khan was also simultaneously shooting for Yash Chopra's Dil To Pagal Hai. Mani Ratnam selected Manisha Koirala to play the lead role, after he was unable to get through to Kajol.[9][10] Preity Zinta was chosen to play a supporting role.[11] Raveena Tandon was approached by the team to appear in the "Chaiyya Chaiyya" song, but turned down the offer citing her disinterest in featuring as a part of an item number.[12]
Sameer Chanda and Wasiq Khan were the production and art designers for Dil Se...[2][13] The principal photography took place in Himachal Pradesh, Leh, Assam, New Delhi, Kerala, and Ladakh over a period of 55 days.[2][13] Tigmanshu Dhulia was the casting director. Pia Benegal and Manish Malhotra were the costume designers. The song "Chaiyya Chaiyya" was shot between Malaika Arora and Shah Rukh Khan on top of the Nilgiri Express, en route Ooty, Coonoor and Kotagiri, the train is particularly painted in brown for the song sequence.[14] The travelling scenes, other crucial scenes were shot between Manisha Koirala and Shah Rukh Khan near Alchi Monastery, during the Sindhu Darshan Festival in Leh.[14] The longest song of the film "Satrangi Re" with the lead pair was shot near Thikse Monastery, the mystical Basgo Monastery ruins, and Pangong lake near Pangong Tso in Ladakh.[14] The song "Jiya Jale" was shot on Preity Zinta and Shah Rukh Khan near Athirappilly Falls, Alappuzha backwaters, Periyar National Park, Vilangan Hills and Periyar Lake in Kerala.[14] Several action sequences in the film choreographed by Allan Amin were shot near Connaught Place, New Delhi, Rajpath and Old Delhi. Filming wrapped up in February 1998. [2][14]
Themes
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Dil Se.. is said to be a journey through the seven shades of love that are defined in ancient Arabic literature. Those shades are defined as attraction, infatuation, love, reverence, worship, obsession, and death. The character played by Shahrukh Khan passes through each shade during the course of the film.[15] Authors Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti of Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance also compared Khan's romance in the film to the trajectory of love in ancient Arabic literature, believing the lyrics in two of the songs to have delivered an "apocalyptic fatalism".[16]
The film is a dramatization of the attraction between a character from the heart of India and another from a peripheral state and a representation of opposites in the eyes of the law and society.[17] Dil Se.. is described as a film "structured through deferment and unfulfilled teasing promises".[18] Rediff.com said about the film, "The entire feel of the film is appropriately poetic, with a few romantic exchanges standing out quite memorable. Tigmanshu Dhulia has handled the film's dialogues adroitly. Amid moonlit desert dunes, there is a particularly stirring conversation between the leading pair. Amar reveals his hate for Meghna's eyes – because he can't see the world is hidden behind them and his love for the same, stunning eyes – because he can't see the world hidden behind them."[19]
Elleke Boehmer and Stephen Morton in their book Terror and the Postcolonial (2009) believe that the songs and their exotic locations in the film were very important in masking the impossible reconciliation between a terrorist and an uptight government agent by evoking pure fantasy.[18] They argue that this is a phenomenon called the "liminal space of dreaming" in that the terrorist woman cannot fulfill her sexual desire so the songs fill the void of this desire by "their sumptuousness and exotic locales" in the Ladakh region.[18] The theme of the movie was reported to be paying homage to the 1981 British film The French Lieutenant's Woman.[20]
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Release
Dil Se.. released on 21 August 1998. Though the film was shot mainly in Hindi-language, director Mani Ratnam also dubbed and released the film in Tamil and Malayalam in the title Uyire.. (transl. Darling..) which became very popular among Tamil-audience with its songs and in Telugu with the title Prematho (transl. With love).[21][22][23] Shah Rukh Khan's Tamil dialogues were dubbed by Arvind Swamy in the film.[24]
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Reception
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Critical reception and box office
The performances of Manisha Koirala and Preity Zinta received critical acclaim; each received Filmfare Award nominations, with Zinta winning the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut.
Though Dil Se.. received an average box office response in India, it found success overseas. It was screened at the Era New Horizons Film Festival and the Helsinki International Film Festival. The film went on to win the Netpac Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, two National Film Awards, and six Filmfare Awards. The intense political agenda of the film with the trials of the Assamese on the India-China border, the love story and the fact that it coincided with the 50th Independence Anniversary celebrations became a major factor for its success overseas, particularly amongst the South Asian diaspora in the west.[25][26]
The film became the first Indian film to enter the top 10 in the United Kingdom box office charts.[6] Even months after its release in September 1998, the film was still screened on five screens, five times per day with an average of 3,000 spectators across all screens in the Cineworld complex in Feltham, West London.[25] Deepa Deosthalee wrote a positive review to the film, calling it "a picture-perfect ode to love" and praising the direction, writing and performances.[27] Khalid Mohamed found the film disappointing, noting it "fine performances, technique and music" but panning its lack "of that crucial element called a story".[28] Anupama Chopra of India Today wrote, "Amid the reels of tripe churned out by Bollywood every week, Dil Se... is a noble attempt. But coming from Mani, that's simply not good enough."[29] The film was included in Time's "Best of Bollywood" list in 2010.[30] Dil Se.. was also a hit in Japan.[7]
Awards and nominations
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Soundtrack
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The soundtrack features six songs composed by A. R. Rahman. Raja Sen of Rediff called it, "Rahman's finest soundtrack, by far."[19] The soundtrack album sold six million units in India.[5] The song "Chaiyya Chaiyya", based on Sufi music (lyrics based on the Sufi folk song, "Thaiyya Thaiyya" by Bulleh Shah) and Urdu poetry,[34] became especially popular and the song has been featured in the film Inside Man (2006), in the musical Bombay Dreams, and in the television shows Smith and CSI: Miami.[35] The soundtrack was recorded in several other languages.
Malayalam lines for the song "Jiya Jale" was written by lyricist Gireesh Puthenchery.
The bass guitarist Guy Pratt, who played on post-Roger Waters Pink Floyd albums Delicate Sound of Thunder, The Division Bell and Pulse played bass on title song "Dil Se Re".[36]
Original version
Hindi (Dil Se..)
All lyrics are written by Gulzar and Malayalam lyrics from the song "Jiya Jale" was penned by Gireesh Puthenchery; all music is composed by A. R. Rahman.
Personnel
- Producer: India Talkies (Bharat Shah)
- Director: Mani Ratnam
- Lyrics: Gulzar
- Bass Guitar on "Dil Se Re": Guy Pratt
- Bass Guitar on "Chaiyya Chaiyya": Keith Peters
- Flamenco guitar on "Satrangi Re": John Themis
- Percussion: Sivamani
- Dilruba: Saroja
- Santoor: Seenu
- Engineer – H. Sridhar, S. Sivakumar
- Engineer [Additional Engineer] – Paul Wright
- Ganga, Kanchana, Febi, Seji, Anto, Chandran, Shreenivas, Noell James[37]
Dubbed versions
Tamil (Uyire)
All lyrics are written by Vairamuthu and Malayalam lyrics from the song "Nenjinile Nenjinile" was penned by Gireesh Puthenchery; all music is composed by A. R. Rahman.
Telugu (Premato)
All lyrics are written by Sirivennela Seetharama Sastry and Malayalam lyrics from the song "Innaalilaa Ledule" was penned by Gireesh Puthenchery; all music is composed by A. R. Rahman.
Background score
Hindi (Dil Se..)
Track List :
Tamil (Uyire)
Track List :
Malayalam (Uyire)
Track List :
Telugu (Premato)
Track List :
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References
Bibliography
External links
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