Baradwaj Rangan<http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/searchresult.aspx?AliasName=8B0eXUZBNCizL0pJ8AWAWQ==> First Published : 28 Dec 2008 01:17:00 AM IST Last Updated : 28 Dec 2008 09:03:46 AM IST
WHEN I heard that Aamir Khan was doing the remake of AR Murugadoss' Tamil potboilerblockbuster 'Ghajini' (which took its cues from Memento), I was curious if he'd understand that Memento was about short-term memory loss only so much as The Man in the Iron Mask was about a fellow whose mug was encased in metal. The real point of the film was underscored in an early scene at a café where the protagonist is asked what good his avenging is if he won't remember, 15 minutes later, that he has avenged himself. We lower ourselves to the level of animals to do the things we cannot do as humans, but what if this debasement couldn't provide the closure we needed to resume life as humans again? Only a pale shadow of this latter aspect appears to have trickled into the Hindi version. Finally in the lion's den, Sanjay (Aamir Khan) cracks his knuckles and breaks the bones of a horde of henchmen, but soon after his exertions leave his opponents in the dust, he stops cold. He's forgotten what he was doing there in the first place, and the sight of the heap of bodies around him does nothing to remind him. He's physiologically possessed by a raging fury but psychologically unable to make shape or sense of it and this is one of the few moments you see what this film could have become had it been driven by Aamir Khan, the actor. Otherwise, 'Ghajini' is simply a sleek showcase for Aamir Khan, the star. There is, of course, nothing wrong in a big star wanting to give his faithful audiences the full blast of his big star power and, quite frankly, that's the sort of thing that often attracts us to the movies in the first place but watching the film, I couldn't help thinking: All this effort, and for this? Had Aamir done 'Ghajini' as a lark, the way he did 'Fanaa', we could have indulgently dismissed it as the kind of trifle even the best of performers has to peddle in order to save himself a seat at the marketplace. The problem with Ghajini, though, is that it takes itself far too seriously for something so fundamentally silly. It's not content being a big, trashy B-movie (or perhaps a more truthful way of putting it would be that those of us who expect consistently great things from Aamir Khan are unable to look at it as just a big, trashy B-movie). It wants to make us believe we're watching something better, something greater, something cleverer than what it actually is — and this inflated sense of its own proportion seeps right through to its protagonist's frame. Sanjay is so strikingly, so aesthetically bulked up, it's as if he were jointly conceived by Michelange l o and Talwalkars. When it's just another He-man hero flexing the biceps, when it's a Mithun Chakraborty or Sunny Deol, this would barely register. But when it's Aamir Khan, you ask if the short-term memory loss somehow managed to leave untouched the brain cells containing the information about his incredible, multi-machine exercise regime, which would surely span several stretches of 15 minutes. It's not that Aamir Khan is beyond masala movies today — if anything, a good actor should be able to do anything while still in his prime but through his choice of roles and films, he's become one of our few staractors of whom we demand more, and when we sense something missing, when the actor adds to the flaws in the film instead of helping us gloss over these gaping holes, we transform into crotchety nitpickers. I suppose those who haven't seen the Tamil version (or those who have, but are afflicted by, well, you-know-what) would at least have the machinations of the plot or the occasional surprise in a performance to cling on to but for the rest of us, Ghajini is, scene for scene, moment for moment, practically the same movie, with the same pluses (the romantic portions) and the same minuses (pretty much everything else). Aamir Khan plays Sanjay almost exactly the way Suriya played this character. Asin imports wholesale every single expression from her earlier portrayal of the same part. Jiah Khan, as the medical student who first hinders and later helps Sanjay, is as infuriating a character as her predecessor was. The background score, as in the Tamil version, is so deafening, there are times you wonder if it's your skull over which an iron pipe has been brought down hard. Even A R Rahman's best song here (Behka) is positioned at the same point in the story that Harris Jayaraj's best song (Oru maalai ilaveyil neram) was positioned back there — how's that for eerily wholesome symmetry? One significant departure from the Tamil version is the climax they've thankfully streamlined it (in other words, the villain has no equally evil twin) and they've also shaped the Jiah Khan character to function as an agent of closure. By replicating an earlier moment of loss, Murugadoss is able to squeeze in a couple of effective emotional beats into a segment which was earlier just about choreographed fisticuffs. But the kind of fix there needed to be more of is the replacement of the generic dance item in the second half of the older film with the far more situational (and therefore, far more relevant) Kaise mujhe tum mil gayi, just after Sanjay takes leave of Kalpana (Asin) and just before you sense something terrible is about to happen. The aching sense of separation virah, if you want to look at it in oldworld terms glazes the central love story with a layer of heartfelt sentiment. A few more touches like this one, and this violent tale of revenge might have actually stuck around in some corner of the mind 15 minutes after stepping out of the theatre. ***[email protected]* ** http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=D%C3%A9j%C3%A0+view&artid=1RuktBvO0zw=&SectionID=KJQqyDmkz2A=&MainSectionID=KJQqyDmkz2A=&SEO=AR,Murugadoss,aamir,+ghajini&SectionName=x%7C9vn7RWZHiZ6hUORyQMPA == -- regards, Vithur
