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Aamir Khan’s Talaash has opened a can of worms. The ‘Aamir Khan’ tag seems to have raised the status of the supernatural and the ghost film. When we mercilessly run down ghost-cum-horror films made today by Ramgopal Varma and Vikram Bhatt, one wonders why we should be so grandiose in our praise of Talaash which, when it comes down to ground zero, is nothing more than a ghost film that leaves questions hanging in the air. Ghost films often incorporate mystery, intrigue, thrills, murders, mysterious killings, air of foreboding and a dozen other permutations and combinations of plot-lines and stories. Rosie in Talaash recreates the most commonly experienced ghost story about the ‘return’ from the dead of one, who has left something unsaid or undone; who wishes something unacknowledged to be brought to light; or, wants revenge or reparation. Rosie encompasses all three elements. But unlike Nana Patekar in one episode of Darna Mana Hai, she is very unreal in her designer clothes and sticks out like a sore thumb in the sleazy brothel she once belonged to. The entry of Ramgopal
Varma and Vikram Bhatt raised the status of the supernatural with
slickly produced and lavishly mounted supernatural films like Darna
Mana Hai (2003) and Raaz (2002).
With the turn of the century, monstrous, scary beings somewhere from unknown spaces began to fade away. The ghosts were like any other human being. One cannot distinguish between real characters and the ghost. These films do not have a theme song. These are high-end productions aimed at the mainstream audience released after massive marketing and promoting support. Ramgopal Varma’s Bhoot Returns had an imaginative and scary poster that used optical illusion in the portrait of a little girl with double-eyes and a bleeding mouth. Amitabh Bachchan played a very realistic and benevolent ghost in Vivek Sharma’s Bhootnath (2008). The film is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost. Bachchan played a ghost again very briefly in Delhi 6. During the 1950s through the 1960s, ‘ghosts’ were created from real characters, who assumed the identity of a ghost to sustain the intrigue. Three outstanding Hindi films where the ‘ghost’ was not really a ghost are Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal (1949), Hemanta Mukherjee’s Bees Saal Baad (1962) and Woh Kaun Thi (1964) directed by Raj Khosla. The films remain the most aesthetically made within the suspense genre. Shot in brilliant black-and-white with some of the most immortal musical scores we have ever heard, the three films have yet to find a parallel in contemporary cinema. "Many believe Mahal is about a beautiful ghost ensnaring Hari Shankar. But the real twist is the reincarnated lover. Kamini’s ghostly appearances distract us into believing she is the one who is reincarnated. In fact, it is Hari Shankar (Ashok Kumar), who is reborn with the soul of the mansion’s former inhabitant," says film historian Nasreen Munni Kabir. Mahal was shot by German cinematographer Josef Wirsching, who used stunning close-ups and shadows to create dramatic tension and infuse menace. Bimal Roy used a revenge story married to a sweet, nostalgic love story shot against a beautiful location and a spacious mansion for Madhumati (1958). It was his biggest boxoffice success. During the 1970s and 1980s, ghost films with supernatural elements or purely supernatural films in the Hindi mainstream did not enjoy a classy status. The Ramsay Brothers ran a virtual monopoly in making ghost films that used doses of the supernatural generously and saw that they got bracketed with the genre of ‘horror’ films. But this ‘monopoly’ did not bring them up to "A" Grade category. These were released without much marketing or publicity in "B" Grade theatres and drew their own niche audience. The Ramsays sourced the rising crescendo of fear in their films from evil acts of some unknown monster. These films offered sleazy entertainment and crude fears to a lower class urban audience with cheap thrills and overly made-up actresses in skimpy dresses. According to Nic Ransome, screen writer and script consultant, "by definition, the supernatural cannot be contained, circumscribed or erased. Horror, at its most fundamental level, plays out Freud’s return of the repressed." The soundtracks of films like Darna Zaroori Hai directed by six different directors are filled with audio jerks put in to scare the audience. The music is no longer a USP and directors are choosing natural ambient sounds. Song sequences, if any, are confined to the soundtrack in the background. Rosie, however, changes the conventions of a supernatural and/or ghost film. As a ‘restless’ soul who seeks a live person to find out the truth, she is not at all frightening but like M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, startles us when she appears suddenly in the backseat of the police car. There is nothing stunning, or even scary, about Talaash because it is more a psychological exploration of Sekhawat than a glimpse into the tragedy of a young sex worker. Talaash simply reinforces and reasserts the new quality of realism within the supernatural genre in recent Hindi cinema.
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