A review of Dil Se, dil se.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which
we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely
disdains to annihilate us.

Every angel is terrifying.

from the 1st Duino Elegy, Rainer Maria Rilke.

I am a reckless reader, and the sudden poignance of certain lines, I credit to an innate taste. When I read of the angel pressing Rilke to his heart, I closed my eyes, because, I already knew without knowing that every angel was terrifying. Few days ago I felt an urge to see Dil Se. It was a favourite of mine while an early teen, the sort of age when a bookish fatso decides on a pious devotion towards anything with a 'serious topic'. I felt like falling in love with Meghna again. I have fallen in love with the film, and sincerely confess my prior indifference to it.

Lets just skip the parts where we praise the cinematography, and other cinematic values. Its all there, for sure, but this is the type of film that doesn't beat you on the head with its own virtuosity. The camera doesn't give us vertigo with disorienting angles, the editing does not turn every scene into a cliffhanger, the music is not cold and orchestral. The film doesn't try to be a classic. Every value is well and good, but not cunning.

Dimwits will not even begin to like this film, and half wits just might see that Amar 'represents' India, the centre of India, and Meghna 'symbolises' Mother's sorrowful, ephemeral fringe, or even, horizon. A truly sensitive viewer, or a brilliantly ignorant one, might just see that the film is very genuine, with no character ever degenerating into a symbol, and no symbol ever bloating into a character. There are some other themes, tropes, and stuff, like the lover's search, woman as beauty and sorrow, stuff. Don't bother about it, if you can appreciate the film only that way, then do.

This movie is special because Manisha Koirala. She doesn't speak much, so I won't either, just watch her and, if you have a girl friend, don't go out with her on the same day. You will be doing an injustice to at least one of them. Koirala loudest voice is when she has a seizure.

Shah Rukh Khan finally got to elevate his entire acting range in a character fit for his virtues, virtues that Meghna expresses her envy for in the film - vitality, energy, an almost epileptic joy. In Darr, he played a psychotic lover, in Yes Boss he plays a yuppie yes man, in Raju ban gaya gentleman he plays a straightforward everyman, and in Dil Se all of this soars into one excellent performance. He is quietest when she is envying him.

Meghna is a terrorist, Amar is an AIR man. He falls for her, and trailing her madly in the northern regions misty and snowy, falls in love too. He returns dejected, dolourous and agrees to a marriage to the new face Preity Zinta, fresh from her Liril ad, cute and Mallu. Meghna and her group comes to Delhi, certain vicissitudes in their planning causes her to ask Amar for help with a job in the AIR, further complications, all very well written, bring about a denouement between Laila and Majnu, and then there is a bit of rhetoric about the army and terrorism. They blow up and die, she is a suicide bomber.The greater embrace of the Angel. Except for that bit of rhetoric, everything in this film is very fine, very fine indeed.

The songs are better than songs, surely, they are poems within the 'search for love' in the film. First is the light flirtation in Chaiyya Chaiya; exhilarated Dil Se; aroused Satrangi Re,(there is no release, of course, one doesn't make love to Angels, and in any case, it would have been censored) and then Preity's Chaiyya Chaiyya, Jiya Jale. In fact, if Jiya Jale hadn't been so Mallu-sexy, we would have actually realised in one sitting itself that Preity is heart broken at the end.

A good book to read for a feel like Dil Se is Pamuk's The New Life. Or you could go and read the first Duino Elegy. There aren't many books or filims out there with such a dream as their theme.