| Directed by | Mani Ratnam |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Bharat Shah Mani Ratnam Ram Gopal Varma Shekhar Kapur |
| Written by | Tigmanshu Dhulia Mani Ratnam Sujatha |
| Starring | Shahrukh Khan Manisha Koirala Preity Zinta |
| Music by | A. R. Rahman |
| Cinematography | Santosh Sivan |
| Editing by | Suresh Urs |
| Distributed by | Madras Talkies Eros International |
| Release date(s) | 21 August 1998 |
| Running time | 158 mins |
| Country | India |
| Language | Hindi |
| Budget |  12 crore (US$2.64 million)[1] |
| Box office | 17.5 crore (US$3.85 million)[2] (All India Gross) |
Dil Se was shot in Himachal, Kashmir, Assam, Delhi, Kerala, and other parts of India and Bhutan over a period of 55 days. The film is considered an example of Indian Parallel Cinema. The highly stylized film won awards for cinematography, audiography, choreography, and music, among others. Despite being a failure at the Indian box office, the film was a success overseas earning $975,000 (USA) and £537,930 in the UK,[5] becoming the first Indian film to enter the top 10 in the United Kingdom box office charts.[6][7]
Story Idea
Amarkant "Amar" Varma (Shahrukh Khan), an All-India Radio program executive living in Delhi, India, is dispatched to the troubled North-Eastern region of India to report from there on the situation pertaining to the approaching 50th Anniversary of Indian independence. There, he interviews a terrorist leader on his group's motivation and ethics. He then comes across Meghna (Manisha Koirala) at a railway station and chats up with her. He excuses himself for a while, offering to get her a cup of tea, only to find her gone already on a train with three mysterious men. A few weeks after that meeting, he spots her again in a street and confronts her, but she resists and pretends not to recognise him. Amar then resorts to stalking and seeks her our near her place of dwelling and tells her he loves her "dil se" (English equivalent : from the heart). To discourage him, Meghna tells him that she is married, and leaves. Amar feels embarrassed for flirting with a married woman, and sincerely wishes to apologize to her. He arranges a meeting with her to do so, but she brings two mysterious men with her, who subsequently take Amar away and beat him. This harsh experience invigorates Amar to find Meghna again. After somehow finding out her plans to visit Ladakh, he follows her with the convenient excuse of reporting on the local festivities and she gives him the slip there too.As Amar heads home, he finds her on the same bus. He starts flirting with her and mocking her for having her supposed husbands beat him up. Then a security guard intercepts them and asks Amar his purpose for visiting Ladakh, and Amar tells him he was reporting on the festivities there. When it is Meghna's turn to answer, she tells him that she and Amar are together. The bus breaks down and the passengers are forced to walk a two-day journey to their destination. Amar nearly loses Meghna again but manages to get hold of her and confronts her, angered about the fact she had used him, before proceeding to accuse her of being a morally loose tease. She tells him her name and that the two men who beat him up were her brothers. Amar tries to aggressively force himself up on Meghna, which causes her a painful anxiety attack.
During the pair's two day walk they have a whirlwind adventure through the desert. Though the two fall for each other, Meghna slips away and leaves Amar to return to the safety of Delhi alone. Upon his return, he finds that his family wants him to meet Preeti Nair (Preity Zinta), a potential bride. Amar and Preeti both agree to get married. Then Meghna shows up in Delhi out of nowhere at Amar's house, on the day he is to be engaged to Preeti, and asks for a place to stay. Amar and his family let her stay at their house, and Amar arranges for a job for her at the radio station.
It is later revealed that Meghna is a member of the terrorist/revolutionist group who are in to Delhi to assassinate the President on the Republic Day parade. Amar finds out about the plan and confronts her, when she escapes. Amar continues to pursue her, despite getting arrested by the police and getting beaten up repeatedly by her men. In the end, he finds Meghna and pleads her to not carry out the attack. She warns him to stay away from her, as she is afraid that he might activate the bomb in her vest. He then whispers in her ear, "If you won't come with me, take me with you." Meghna's intense inner struggle subsides; she embraces Amar and the bomb gets detonated, killing them both.
Cast
- Shahrukh Khan as Amarkant "Amar" Varma
- Manisha Koirala as Meghna
- Preity Zinta as Preeti Nair
- Raghuvir Yadav as Shukla
- Zohra Segal as Grandmother
- Arundathi Nag
- Sabyasachi Chakravarthy
- Piyush Mishra as CBI investigation officer
- Aditya Srivastava
- Krishnakanth
- Ken Philip
- Sanjay Mishra
- Mita Vasisht as Mita
- Malaika Arora as dancer on train
- Gajraj Rao as CBI investigation officer
Themes
The film is a dramatisation of the attraction between a character from the heart of India and another from a peripheral state and a representation of opposites in the eyes of the law and society.[9] Dil Se is described as a film "structured through deferment and unfulfilled teasing promises." [10] Rediff.com said about the film, "The entire feel of the film is appropriately poetic, with a few romantic exchanges standing out quite memorably. Tigmanshu Dhulia has handled the film's dialogues adroitly. Amid moonlit desert dunes, there is a particularly stirring conversation between the leading pair. In a somewhat big-bad-wolf-ian moment, Amar reveals his love for Meghna's eyes -- because he can't see the world hidden behind them, and his hate for the same, stunning eyes -- because he can't see the world hidden behind them."[11]
Elleke Boehmer and Stephen Morton in their book Terror and the postcolonial (2009) believe that the songs and their exotic locations in the film were very important in masking the impossible reconciliation between a terrorist and an uptight government agent by evoking pure fantasy.[10] They argue that this is a phenomenon called the "liminal space of dreaming" in that the terrorist woman cannot fulfil her heterosexual desire so the songs fill the void of this desire by "their sumptuousness and exotic locales" in the Ladakh region.[10]
Release and reception
Dil Se was screened at the Era New Horizons Film Festival and the Helsinki International Film Festival The film went on to win the Netpac Award for Special Mention at the Berlin International Film Festival, two National Film Awards, and six Filmfare Awards. The film was a box office flop in India.[2] The intense political agenda of the film with the trials of the Assamese on the India-China border, the love story and the fact that it coincided with the 50th Independence Anniversary celebrations were cited for its failure at the time.[12] Interestingly, however, it became a major success overseas, particularly amongst the South Asian diaspora in the west.[13] It became the first Indian film to enter the top 10 in the United Kingdom box office charts.[6] Even two months after its release in September 1998 the film was still screened on five screens, five times per day with an average of 3000 spectators a day for each screen alone in the 14-screen Cineworld complex in Feltham, West London.[12]Deepa Deosthalee wrote a positive review to the film, calling it "A picture perfect ode to love" and praising the direction, writing and performances.[14]
Awards
The film has won the following awards:1999 Berlin International Film Festival (Germany)
- Netpac Award - Special Mention - Mani Ratnam
- Silver Lotus Award - Cinematography - Santosh Sivan
- Silver Lotus Award - Best Audiography - H. Sridhar
- Best Female Debut - Preity Zinta
- Best Music Director - A. R. Rahman
- Best Lyricist - Gulzar for "Chaiyya Chaiyya"
- Best Male Playback - Sukhwinder Singh for "Chaiyya Chaiyya"
- Best Cinematographer - Santosh Sivan
- Best Choreography - Farah Khan for "Chaiyya Chaiyya"
Soundtrack
| Dil Se | |||||||||||||||||
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| For mp3 download | |||||||||||||||||
| Music Videos | |||||||||||||||||
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The soundtrack was recorded in several other languages. The Tamil version of the track "Chaiyya Chaiyya", entitled "Thaiyya Thaiyya", was sung by Palghat Sriram, although Sukhwinder Singh, who sang the Hindi version was credited as the singer.[18] Malayalam lyrics for the song "Jiya Jale" were penned by Gireesh Puthenchery while the Punjabi part of "Thayya Thayya" was penned by Tejpaul Kour.[citation needed]
Hindi
| Title | Singer(s) | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| "Chaiyya Chaiyya" | Sukhwinder Singh, Sapna Awasti | 6:54 |
| "Jiya Jale" | Lata Mangeshkar, M. G. Sreekumar & Chorus | 5:07 |
| "Dil Se Re" | A. R. Rahman, Anuradha Sriram, Anupama, Febi Mani | 6:44 |
| "Ae Ajnabi" | Udit Narayan, Mahalakshmi Iyer | 5:48 |
| "Thayya Thayya" | Sukhwinder Singh | 4:35 |
| "Satrangi Re" | Sonu Nigam, Kavita Krishnamurthy | 7:25 |
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