Underrated Bollywood films

A movie that is beautiful but underrated. The first in my list is Shabd.

I remembered when Shabd was about to be released. The music was excellent. The star cast was promising. The tone of the film looked different. Everyone was excited towards this film. But when it released it was brutally critised by audience as well as critics. It was called a wastage of time and talent. I had not watched the film in the theatre but later on when it was aired on TV.

The plot is interesting in my opinion. A renowned writer is experiencing a "writer's block". He had to deliver the book but is unable to come up with an idea for it. Finally he decides to write a character imagining his wife. But in his book his wife has a very different personality. He manipulates his wife in the real life to get the desired outcomes for the events in his books. This leads to a mayhem in their personal life leading the writer to insanity.

When I watched the film I was captivated by it. I could not understand why it was criticized. The storyline was unique. At least I had not seen anything like it. I liked the way the film has been presented. I liked the atmosphere. I liked the performance. I liked everything about the film.

According to me this film is underrated classic. The film does a lot of heavy lifting of ideas but lets the viewer think as well. The film does not serve the ideas on the plates but challenges the viewer to think and understand.

This film is not an obvious one. Seeing the film it may also feel like a psychological drama. It does not fall into the category of a typical romantic film. It belonged to the category of psychological art film. believe it is a quite an intelligent film which relied a lot on viewers to think beyond what day here and see. However considering the kind of movies we were getting in the decade of 2000s it definitely expected something much more from the viewers. At that time viewers were not ready for such tasks. They wanted to watch the film for entertainment and not to provoke thoughts.

I feel that Shabd was very ahead of its time. It was a content driven film when the films were focusing on cheesy action, dance sequences, and obvious slap stick conedy. It belived that the viewers are intelligent to consume the content which required a lot of thinking instead feeding them with brain rot. I believe this film would have been received better if it had been released 10 or 12 years later on digital platforms where the viewers specifically look for content driven and thought provoking films and series.

I have watched Shabd several times and each instance impresses me equally or more. I appreciate all cast and crew who put in an effort towards a film that was daring and experimental. Though it did not receive the fame it deserved but everyone involved should be proud to have "Shabd" on their filmography.