Starring: Shah Rukh Khan, Manisha Koirala
Director: Mani Ratnam
Remember Mani Ratnam - the guy who gave us Roja and Bombay? Those were movies that spoke of insurgency amd terrorism, of demands and bargains, sacrifices and murders - well Dil Se also tries to do something of the sort, but somewhere along the way, it gets so caught up with picturising the story, that the story itself falls by the wayside.
The movie is like a patchwork quilt (though a very striking one), with bits and pieces picked up from contemporary India's turmoil, supposedly telling us the why's & wherefores of insurgency. We move between the backwaters of Kerala, the deserts of Ladakh, the jungles of the North-East. We have a zealous All India Radio correspondent rendevousing with shadowy chiefs of equally shadowy terrorist outfits. Then he takes time off to romance with a curvaceous Malaika Arora & a stunning Manisha Koirala. The story covers miles & miles of landscape, yet it remains at a standstill.
The film works only on one level: the purely visual and aural. Dil Se is poetry in motion, when it comes to Santosh Sivan's cinematog- raphy. India has never looked so beautiful. The performances are adequately engrossing. The winner of course is A.R Rahman's music score - it's absolutely brilliant, living up to his reputation as the music whizz kid of the 90's.
