Khamoshi: The Musical (1996)

ख़ामोशी

This movie is so lovely I hardly know where to begin.  Driven by the truly outstanding work of its actors, Khamoshi: The Musical tells a story that in its particulars is specific to the concerns of its deaf-mute characters, but that nevertheless resonates universally for anyone who has parents or a child.

Joseph (Nana Patekar) and his wife Flavy (Seema Biswas) are the deaf-mute parents of a hearing daughter, Annie (Manisha Koirala).  In the film's opening scenes Annie is gravely wounded in a car accident.  As she lies in a hospital bed clinging to life, the narrative shifts into flashback, and Annie recounts her life story.  When Annie was a young girl, her love of music was fostered by her singing, dancing grandmother Maria (rendered adorably by the legendary Helen).  As she grows up, and her family weathers hardship and tragedy, Annie becomes distanced from her music.  Her parents - especially Flavy - grow to resent the music because they cannot hear it; they fear that it will pulls her away from their world and from them.  As an adult, Annie meets Raj (Salman Khan), a musician and music producer.  Raj falls in love with Annie's voice, and with Annie, redoubling the tension between Annie and her parents.  Raj wants both to record Annie and to marry her; Flavy hates music, Joseph hates Raj, and Annie is agonizingly torn between her love for and responsibility to her parents on the one hand, and her need for autonomy and for music on the other. 

The film's story is poignant and well-executed; like other films by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, it is melodramatic and a little bombastic, but unlike some of his others, the melodrama and bombast are deflty executed in just the right measure to magnify and project emotions rather than parodizing them.  (Contrast Bhansali's terrible Devdas, which I can hardly believe was made by the same person.)  But more than anything, it is the stellar work of the actors that makes this film so powerful.  Nana Patekar and Seema Biswas, as the deaf-mute couple, had a difficult job to do - conveying their emotional states with their faces and hands instead of with words - and they were simply mesmerizing.  The tenderness between them was beautiful, and their interactions with their daughter - whether sharing joy or locking horns - were just gripping.  I can't tell you how many times the work of the actors stopped my breath while I while watching this film. 

Manisha Koirala was outstanding as well.  Anyone who has seen Dil se knows what Manisha can do.  She was excellent throughout Khamoshi but one scene stands out and haunts me particularly; after a dispute with her father Annie stands outside their house screaming out her frustration through the door and signing frantically, even though Joseph can neither hear nor see her.  It's a moving speech bringing to the fore the undercurrents of Annie and Joseph's relationship; Annie suppressed a lifetime of resentment at Joseph for using her as a mouthpiece, for wanting to keep her a child, for stifling her music, and it came bursting magnificently forth in this one intense scene. 

Khamoshi: The Musical is ironically and evocatively titled; "khamoshi" means "silence," and so the tension between the silent world of Joseph and Flavy, and Raj's music-filled world is compressed into the film's title.  But while the details of the story turn on Joseph and Flavy's deafness - their fear of interacting with the hearing world and their fear of losing their daughter to it - the film's themes translate to generational conflict more universally.  Parents sometimes fear losing their children to pursuits they don't understand; children sometimes experience guilt at seemingly abandoning their parents to pursue their own lives, marriages, careers.  Khamoshi addresses these universal conflicts touchingly, through its story of a family that has faced more than its share of difficulty and yet still bonds together with tremendous love. 

If there is a weakness in the film it is the music, which is largely unmemorable and ordinary, and at times worse than that.  This is frustrating to me, because I have often found that movies about music - where you might expect particular attention to be given to this aspect - nevertheless have poor music.  This was an irritation in Morning Raga and Tehzeeb and it is an irritation here as well. Still, this is a minor quibble - the movie is so fantastic otherwise that a couple of middling songs are easily overlooked.

(Khamoshi: The Musical is available for free download at Jaman.com)

Comments

[yves]

Hi Carla,

Thanks EVER so much for your mention of the Jaman link where I was able to get that amazing film. You'll hear me about it soon no doubt. I'm still resonating from it, and its beauty is sinking into me.
Do you have an idea why it so little appreciated by the public when it came out?
Cheers discoverer
yves

[yves]

Carla hallo again,
Well, there, I've posted something rather extravagant about Khamoshi... Perhaps it's a little over the top? But I so loved it.
You'll tell me.
Cheers,
yves

[carla]

Yves, I'll go read your comments. I am so glad that you enjoyed this wonderful movie and also that you took advantage of Jaman to see it.

Hi Carla

I saw this movie a few years ago.

While i liked parts of it, i did not enjoy the movie. Reason - it was too depressing!

Bad enough we had to move with the main characters being deaf and dumb, we had to even endure the painful part of the lead characters losing their son.

I think this is one of the reason why the movie failed.

cheers

Meera

[carla]

Interesting comments, Meera - I didn't see the movie as depressing at all, even though bad things happened to the family; I saw it as very uplifting and hopeful, as the great love and understanding that they shared helped them to weather the tragedies that are unfortunately part of life.

[yves]

Hi Meera (if you come back and read!)
Please if you can, watch this movie again, can you make that effort? (you can skip the hard scenes, you'll know when they come). But watch it again, and tell yourself this:
Love is available to us in this world, love is all we have, love is our only riches. This film tells about this love. Remember the last scene? "He" is not forever silent, he answers us, he does love us... Whether you are a believer or not, love is the best that can happen to one. All this sounds so banal, and yet... it's the ordinary truth of our lives.
Khamoshi celebrates this love, this quest for meaning, this reassuance that in spite of death and despair, there is a joy in living, no matter how hard troubles rain on us.
This movie doesn't fail!! Love doesn't fail, it is there behind the dark clouds of pain and loss, it uses these clouds to shine even more when they are blown aside by the wind.
Watch this movie again!

Hi Carla and Yves

As I said before, parts of the movie were good esp Helen and Manisha's acting. Nana of course always does well.

Yet something didn't work for me in the movie when i saw it the first time. Maybe the landscape was also bleak at times?

Yves, maybe I will watch it again after seeing your passionate posting! I hope I am able to get this DVD again.

I don't know if any of you noticed that the song sung by Salman Khan in the church in Goa - Janaa Hum Tumse Pyaar karte hain is actually a copy of a famous old American pop song - Bring the wine my lady by a singer called Paul (I am forgetting his surname) - he was a very talented and famous singer but really old times may be in the early 70s ! I remember the song coz i heard it some time in the 1990s at a friend's place when i was in college (in India).

[Vikrant]

Wonderful!! This is my most favorite review on your site. You have done full justice to one of my favorite film. Thank you.
I think this is Bhansali's best effort. Probably Manisha's career best performance...Nana Patekar gave a brave performance. This film was released during the period when Nana Patkar was very popular due to his acidic dialog delivery in movies like Tiranga. So majority of the audience was expecting that from Nana. And he played a mute character. Probably that was one of the reason why it didn't work well.

As far as I remember, film's music was super hit. But, I think it has not aged well. I loved Bahon ke darmiyaan ...Hariharan's velvet voice made it a superb experience for me...also I was a big fan of Jaana suno and Udit Narayan...later I came to realize how Jatin-Lalit copied so many of their popular tunes. I can't enjoy these tunes any more.

[carla]

Vikrant - interesting about Nana Patekar being loved for his dialogue delivery at the time this film was made; it certainly must have come across as a departure for him!

I admit that I have a soft spot for "Jaana suno hum tumpe marte hain" - but it's the melody that I love about it (plus Udit's singing), and the melody is of course one of Jatin-Lalit's more blatant thefts. *sigh*

[akif akram]

its a nice musical movie of this year.

[Ali]

Salman Khan love u .. You are the best .. :):):)