Guru
By Staff
Thursday, January 18, 2007 - 3:00 pm
we recommend
An admirable Guru
GURU
The flamboyantly gifted Indian moviemaker Mani Ratnam has an epic
romantic temperament, like a reform-minded 19th century novelist,
with a great eye and a trunk full of Panavision lenese. In his most
characteristic works, such as Bombay (1995) and Dil Se (From the
Heart, 2002), he places intimate personal stories at the eye of the
storm in sweeping political and social dramas. Ratnam's enthralling
and eventful new picture, Guru, is one of his best yet; in fact it
may be the best Indian commercial ("Bollywood") movie since the
Oscar-nominated Lagaan (2000). Inspired by the rags to riches story
of a real-life Indian petrochemical tycoon, the late
Dhirajlal "Dhirubhai" Ambani, it's a realistically textured
biographical thriller staged on an operatic scale. It aims at
nothing less than the canonization of a new type of cultural icon
for post-socialist India. Re-named Gurukant "Gurubhai" Desai and
played with an exhilarating mixture of high-stepping enjoyment and
focused determination by Abishek Bachchan, the movie's Ambani
surrogate is a village boy who lays the groundwork for a huge
company simply by pouncing on opportunities that others miss. We
enjoy rooting for this enterprising businessman hero, and not just
because we identify with the character's delight at working out a
clever new way to avoid paying excise taxes. He's a hero not in
spite of the fact that he's a crafty corporate Capitalist but
because of itbecause his textile factories have created tens of
thousands of jobs, and because the ordinary people he recruited as
shareholders have been hoisted out of poverty by his success. Some
elements of Desai's story test positive for sentimentality,
including his playful, ardent relationship with his plucky wife
(Aishwarya Rai). The failure to make the private lives of the
characters resonate with the main story is an unusual one for
Ratnam, owing perhaps to his overriding drive to valorize Guru as a
positive force in Indian public life. But the film is a triumph of
casting: In a role that is often about the sheer steamrolling force
of his character's personality, Abishek Bachchan's attention to
detail makes Guru accessible rather than intimidating, admirable but
also plausible. In the end this Guru is just like one of us, only
richer.
(David Chute) (Naz 8, Artesia)
http://www.ocweekly.com/film/new-reviews/new-reviews/26580/
