Decoding Silsila (1981)

Movie no. 11/100

May 25, 2018

The next movie in my movie challenge is director Yash Chopra’s ‘Silsila’, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Rekha and Sanjeev Kumar. A commercial failure upon its release in 1981, Silsila is known till this day for the casting coup that Yash Chopra pulled off – Rekha-Amitabh-Jaya in the same movie. Loosely based on the rumored extra marital affair of Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha, the movie banked heavily on Yash Chopra’s strengths – Picturesque locations, an extremely beautiful chiffon clad heroine, a passionate love track and superhit music. None of these could save the movie, though it attained a cult status over the years, much like another Yash Chopra love story, ‘Lamhe’.

Shekhar (played by Shashi Kapoor) and Amit Malhotra (played by Amitabh Bachchan) are two brothers joined at their hip – they are thick as thieves and even bathe together! Shekhar, a combat pilot with the Indian Air Force falls in love with a demure, Shobha (played by Jaya Bachchan), while his younger brother Amit, a theatre actor and writer, falls for the beautiful, Chandni (played by Rekha). Tragedy strikes them days before their wedding, when Shekhar is killed in a plane crash, leaving a pregnant Shobha behind. Due to the gravity of the situation, Amit ends up marrying Shobha, leaving Chandni heartbroken. Soon, Chandni marries Dr. Anand (played by Sanjeev Kumar), who is, coincidentally, treating Shobha after her miscarriage. Clearly not over each other, Amit and Chandni begin a clandestine affair, keeping it a secret from their spouses – who deliver cryptic dialogues as if they know that they are being cheated. Using a series of emotionless shayari and lofty dialogues, the movie questions love and fidelity in marriages, and concludes with the statement – Love is Faith. Faith is Everything. Waah!

The movie feels extremely unstable and slow. Instability stemming from the fact that the writer-director kept swaying between elements of commercial and ‘art’ cinema. So, you have an elaborate set of 10 songs, composed by classical duo Shiv-Hari, as well as scenes with slow moving camera, long stares and dialogues with supposedly deep meaning. With a duration of three hours, the movie seems extremely slow, sometimes to the extent of making you shift in your seats with impatience. (It may have seemed slow, when I was watching it 36 years after its release) Another disappointment was with the submissive nature of the wife, who knows of her husband’s dalliances but instead of confronting, covers them up. This was around the same time that Bollywood also gave us Arth, where the wife does not forgive her husband, let alone cover his philandering ways.

After a break of two years, Jaya Bachchan was back in front of the camera and delivers a decent performance. But her pain-stricken eyes in Abhimaan conveyed her angst better than her steely glances in Silsila. Rekha, playing the typical Yash Chopra heroine, Chandni, looked ravishing but her chemistry with Amitabh Bachchan looked weak (was it because Jaya Bachchan was on the sets? :P ). Sanjeev Kumar and Shashi Kapoor have brief roles, with nothing much to write about. Amitabh Bachchan, playing Amit ji (Yash Chopra cleverly used the name that Jaya, and presumably Rekha also, uses to refer him with), looks stylish and appears to have played this role with the sole aim of proving to the world that all was well in his personal life. A special mention of the music by Shiv Kumar Sharma - Hari Prasad Chaurasiya, for delivering chartbuster songs which are popular even today, especially Rang Barse Bheege Chunar Wali.

Though the movie has gained a cult status over the years, being a part of every Bollywood discussion about the infamous affair of Amitabh Bachchan. But it was a tad bit of a disappointment for me, since the movie did not really live up to my expectations or the hype.