Save for its technical aspects, Dil Se had very less to offer

 

Mostly deemed as one of the "classics" of the time, Mani Ratnam's last of the three films of his thematic trilogy, Dil Se (1998), was not even anywhere close to being a paragon of what we can call an "absolute film," and nowhere a comparison to its cinematically brilliant underrated contemporaries, Satya being one of them. Here's why.

Not to mention the musical gem of A.R. Rahman, Santosh Sivan's phenomenal cinematography, and Farah Khan's astounding job as a choreographer, Dil Se lacked the very essence of a film called "plot." It seemed as though Mani Ratnam has failed to amalgamate and intermix one extraordinary talent with the other, and produce one out-and-out masterpiece, which could have been produced.

In a futile attempt to make it through the parallel cinema, ironically with a mainstream actor as the lead, Mani Ratnam preferably sought to depict the seven stages of love in a rather musically subtle way and, to make matters worse, he chose a nonlinear narrative which further accentuates the genius of the music maestro, and of the cinematographer, for that matter, which makes us take extra notice of the notion that if it hadn’t been for the “aspects” or the “ingredients” of the disjointed narrative, the film wouldn’t have been what it is. Besides, if Satrangi Re was not there, I’m afraid I can’t tell if anybody would ever apprehend the seven shades of love, which is- as a matter of shame- the main theme of the film. One would get completely bored if there were no songs. Dil Se as a whole is not as good as its integrants. Even if we take its “components” into consideration, there is something amiss about Shah Rukh Khan’s acting in some of the most crucial scenes, and in almost all of the scenes wherein Manisha is with him, because she has apparently overshadowed him. 

The role of Preity Zinta was so baseless, it was as though she was so out of job that something had to be given to her out of compassion. The Jiya Jale music video might have portrayed her as a sexual goddess, but one wouldn’t be able to rationalise that. 

With Shah Rukh Khan of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai starring in it, Malaika Arora giving an item number, and with so many song sequences in between, Dil Se stands somewhere between a mainstream and parallel cinema, because it has mixed aspects, mixed feelings, mixed thoughts, mixed performances, and you’d even have mixed observations, so to speak. It’s hard to judge from a critic’s point of view, because it is a film for the dreamy, fanciful and romantic. 

None the less, the film’s triumph shows in its aesthetically poetic beauty, which has been achieved not only through the sweetly gratifying Urdu lyrics of the Chaiyya Chaiyya track but also from some of the romantic dialogues exchanged between Amar (Shah Rukh Khan) and Meghna, or Moina (Manisha Koirala).