Tehzeeb - Of a complex relationship

          Khalid Mohamed's new film Tehzeeb draws its title from the name of the central character played by Urmila Matondkar. Tehzeeb is the daughter of Anwar Jamal and Rukhsana Jamal. Their other daughter, Nazneen or Nazo, is mentally challenged.

          Tehzeeb is a film drawn upon a clash of characters. The Jamal couple met as lovers and married against the wishes of their parents. Anwar came from a rich family, but was failure as a businessman. In contrast, Rukhsana was a star singer who was totally preoccupied with her career. Her soaring success and fame created a chasm between husband and wife and neither side strived hard enough to stop it from widening. The two daughters also got very little out of this strained relationship of their parents.

          Tehzeeb was too young at the time of her father's death, but she grew up with the belief that her mother had shot him. This belief defined her attitude and behaviour towards her mother. Starting with this state of mind to a reconciliation between them and the moments of happiness that follow is a story reminding all of us of our own relationship problems within and outside the family.

          Tehzeeb has a theme with a potential of being developed into a classic family drama. Khalid, however, has no such objective in mind. In our film industry, compromises for the sake of a good box-office is the rule and Khalid is no exception. Khalid says: The story of Tehzeeb has emerged as much from conversations and interviews with friends and psychoanalysts, as from a continuing self-probe about one's imagined relationship with a mother whom I cannot remember. She passed away in an air crash when I was two.

          Said to be beautiful and larger than life, the absence of a mother's memory caused me to wonder how I would have reacted to her persona. What if she had become a successful public personality? Would I have ever been overawed by her? Or would I have challenged her about her responsibilities to the home and the hearth?'

          He explains his dilemma in tense words: Towards this aim, initially I believed an acknowledged ramake of Ingmar Bergman's 'Autumn Sonata' would be in order ... While working in the idiom of popular cinema, I had to reach my reality of what could or what would have been vis-a-vis a son's relationship with his mother.

         "Idiom of popular cinema" is the overriding factor. Six songs and almost as many dance numbers have been incorporated, some of them seem to be uncalled for, others are attuned to the theme or the situation. Even the cultural milieu of a modern Muslim family gets polluted in the process. One has to shed conservatism before settling down to an enjoyable evening. But the film does set you thinking.

          All the three female actresses in the main roles, Shabana Azmi, Urmila and Diya Mirza, have emerged as very intense performers. Diana Hayden, doing New York publisher Sheena Roy's role, and Namrata Shirodkar's Aloka Karnik, the upcoming singer, are merely cameos. Arjun Rampal as Salim Mirza, the writer of pulp fiction who is Urmila's husband, has a very interesting and somewhat complex role.

by Our Film Critic
Dec 5,  2003