Shabd

Words and misdeeds!

Shabd Dir- Leena Yadav Cast- Sanjay Dutt, Aishwarya Rai, Zayed Khan and Sadia Siddiqui. Written by- Sutapa Sikdar and Leena Yadav. Rating- *

The only thing worse than a brainless mind-numbing movie, is a brainless mind-numbing movie that pretends to be an intellectual and aesthetic one. Debutante writer-director Leena Yadav(she's even edited this tedious fare) must've thought during the filming that she was making something novel and riveting. Sadly, thoughts and intentions don't always translate into shabds and deeds! So what we have is in fact an over-boiled egg that's not only unappetizing but also comes without any salt to taste!

Shaukat Vasisht(Sanjay Dutt) is suffering from a writer's block after his follow-up to his Booker prize winning Mindscape has been ripped apart by the critics. Actually, 'Mr. I type my novel on an antique typewriter wearing an Armani' is so consumed with desperation that he's unable to notice the fire in his Looker prize winning wife Antra(Aishwarya). Tch! Tch! Anyways, our dude looks like a writer finds his inspiration in Tamanna, his creation of a woman that wants to break free and live her life. To make his story as real as possible, he encourages Antra to don the garb of Tamanna and allow the overtures of a besotted cad, Yash(Zayed Khan). He even convinces Antra to hide her marital status from Yash. The problem begins when Tamanna becomes Antra and the lines between fantasy and reality become thinner. Shaukat soon realizes that Antra and Yash are not his creations whom he can control as he wishes. You must be thinking that the premise sounds oh so abstract and imaginative. Don't let it fool you though! This is an imposter posing as a highbrow! The film is full with passages that appear to be poetic but are actually drab monologues packaged in the baritone voice of Sanju baba.

The proceedings get so repetitive and soporific after a while that you feel tempted to doze off. But what stops you though are the beautifully written(Vishal Dadlani and Irshad Kamil) and composed(Vishal-Shekhar) songs that are scattered through the running time. Also, your heart goes out to Sanjay for performing his part with sincerity and input. For him and the composer duo- what a waste! Aishwarya keeps switching from disinterested to overly dramatic, and she does both acts unconvincingly. And somebody please tell Zayed that his Shahrukh act just doesn't come together. This dude needs to go back and learn the basics. And yes, what was the casting department(if there was any) thinking when they narrowed him for a college professor? Sadia Siddiqui is engaging as the housemaid and brings some life to the events.

One can't deny that the intent of the maker was to make something different. But Leena should've probably developed the plot a bit more. The relationship between Shaukat and Antra is left undefined as are the characters themselves. For a story that revolves around three characters, the characters have to be delineated with unambiguous clarity. One cannot be commended just for being bold and different. Being bold is not always beautiful! - Abhishek Bandekar

Rating- *

* Poor ** Average *** Good **** Very Good ***** Excellent

6th February, 2005

Shabd is too conceptual and too tentative in its approach. Debutant director Leena Yadav tells a story in Shabd that is very modern in its approach. Shaukat (Sanjay Dutt) does not believe in disappointment but when it comes to him as his own disaster, he is not able to accept it easily. He has a gorgeous wife Antara (Aishwarya Rai) who is very responsive and very thoughtful. She will do anything to make her husband grin. Having earned disgrace with his unusual novel, Shaukat now makes a bid to enact the novel in his real life using himself and Antara as the fundamental characters. Sanjay Dutt supports his wife Aishwarya Rai to have an extra-marital affair with her colleague Zayed Khan, so that the husband could integrate life-like, realistic situations in his current novel.

Can it ever get weirder than this?

Antara meets Zayed Khan who is hell bent on getting this sexy diva. Antara is scruffy by his behavior but remains quiet as she is already a married woman. All attempts by Yash to attract her fail and then Shaukat enter the scene. He wants his wife to enter into a relationship with Yash so that the contours of his story start developing. But, little does he know that Antara will actually defy the novel storyline and fall in love with Yash in real life too. The story has an unforeseen twist as Antara falls head over heels in love with Yash. And there is no looking back for her.

To say the least, Leena Yadav has built a strange story in her attempt to look different.

The film moves on with jerks and fails to even establish one equation among the protagonists of the love triangle. Even the editing is loose and there is poor support on the dialogs.

Music by Vishal-Shekhar is melodic. In fact, a couple of songs do stand out - Khoya Khoya, Chahaton Ka Silsila and Sholo Si were brilliantly executed. After Jhankar Beats and Musafir they did it again. One more winning musical score from the duo. Cinematography by Aseem Bajaj is excellent. The film is visually striking.

Sanjay Dutt performs his piece well. The sober look, crew-cut hairstyle, glasses, suits him well. Aishwarya Rai takes to the job with certainty. And like always, the screen fills up with her guise.

Aishwarya is going to suffer the most from the failure of this film. She was in need of a hit desperately but luck has played with her again. She is totally miscast and her character is lousy. The lines and situations written for her are not well thought of and all this only makes her presence go useless on screen. Aishwarya needs to learn her lessons fast, in her attempt to make a niche for herself overseas.

Zayed Khan is a complete miscast. He does not look like a college professor and even otherwise, doesn't have the maturity to carry off the role with meticulousness. Sadia Siddiqui is very efficient. Kamini Khanna does overacting.

On the whole, SHABD is too theoretical to plea to the customary Indian viewers. At the box-office, the film will find it hard to continue buoyant after its first weekend. 1 1/2 Out of 5

The director Leena Yadav is falsely imprisoned in her aura that she is Stanley Kubrick re-incarnate. Its obvious that Sanju and Ash have signed the dotted line without reading the script and the director should be lauded for making mickey out of them.

The script does not have holes - it has craters. And in terms of execution - it makes you feel that at the end of every shooting schedule the director goes into hibernation and forgets where she left off.

Our writer uses still uses type-writer for drafting his stories, which cleverly signifies the power outages in India. And did I tell you that our writer is suit-fetish? How does it justify the writer being recipient of Booker's prize award when he at loss to delve into the psyche of a woman for his forthcoming novel? Taking too many liberties of Booker's prize eh? (Culprit: Baghbaan!).

It is evident that Ash lacks conviction owing to her Hollywood assignments. Sanju's monologues gets on the nerves. Zayed Khan as a professor. Excuse Me! Bollywood badly needs a dedicated casting dept. Let me re-iterate here that Zayed does not even pretend making wee-bit of effort. It re-enforces my opinion that "star-kids are pampered lot".

And please help me decide which one was worst - chemistry between Sanju and Ash or Zayed and Ash.

Sadiya is only saving grace to the film and does her role with conviction.

Avoid at all costs!

My initial impression about this movie was that it would be yet another love story( which i hate so much i can't tell you ), but still decided to watch it as i didn't get the tickets for 'Black'. But i'll say that this movie is different and that was the precise reason, i liked it. The movie is all about an author Shaukat ( Sanjay Dutt ), a very complicated character played brilliantly by Sanju. He is a booker-prize winner author whose last book was discarded by all for being very 'unreal'. So after a gap of 2 years, he decides to write a 'real' story.... I won't go into much details of his adventure...he asks her wife(aishwarya) to have a romantic relationship with a younger guy(Zayed), and he writes on the events taking place in their lives ... he tries to dictate the scenarios....tries to predict everything that will happen in their lives just as he predicts the fate of the characters in his book... Sanjay Dutt has given a great performance...aish is looking beautiful..and zayed is as always average... One thing that i didn't like about this movie is that the actors were crying a lot more that was expected/necessary in the situations....anyway, a good movie by a debutant director...

Trying hard to like Leena Yadav's debut film 'Shabd', you sit thru the entire feature in eager anticipation of a/the/any magic moment. But ...

Although the premise was novel, the buildup was not. One sex scene does not compensate for the lack of sexual chemistry between the leading pair. The Booker-prize winning author is trying so hard to come up with an authentic story for his next novel that he goes and casts his own wife as her rebellious alter-ego, easily falling for the 'forbidden fruit'. Shaukat Vashist requests, goads, almost forces his wife Antara to initiate an illicit relationship to help him craft a leading character in his next novel. When the 'truth' becomes stranger than his bookish 'fiction', and Antara meets and eventually falls for a dashing (yea, no less) young colleague, Mr Novelist is quite unable to handle it. But he saves the best, a one-page ending, for last.

We are not led to believe that the entire thing is the writer's fertile imagination gone awry. Evidently Yash's character is real (witness the college peon asking Shaukat if he had any message for Yash, etc) and so is the romance that ensues between Yash and the writer's wife Antra. In the end, it appears the writer of "Shabd" was herself so confused about the interactions between her characters (there were only 3!) that she couldn't figure out how to end the characters or the movie!! The performance by Sanjay Dutt was the saving grace of this film. Zayed Khan is miscast as the college professor and lacks acting skills. Aish tries hard but her dialogs are so mushy; could have used some zing.

The writer of this review believes that the writer of this movie should have worked harder on the writer in her movie.