Boooo hoooo hooo! The-man-who-can’t-do-anything-wrong has screwed it up. Maane tu yaa maane naa, Ghajini is a step back for the man who made Taare Zameen Par. Aamir Khan, you don’t need to do this. Especially not now. I hope the Academy members don’t get a hard copy or copy of their new movie. If not, they will surely have a short-term memory loss about India’s chances at the Oscars this year.
Isn’t it ironic that the movie that changed the way Hollywood movies were made became a 180-minute showcase of primitive Bollywood movie making? The mother of all mind manipulators, Christopher Nolan’s cult classic Memento has been reduced to a vegetable, a word they forgot to translate from the original. What hurts the most is not the inspiration, but the complete lack of intelligence in the script.
As unbelievable as it may sound, coming from the little big man, Ghajini is nothing more than a B-grade masala revenge drama from the 80s. The ones in which the dying person whispers the villain’s name to the hero just before turning kaput. Or where the flashback dissolved into the pages of a diary. Or where the villain and his merry pot-coiffed men roamed the streets with metal bars. In fact, there are so many of those bars that we wonder how an iron and steel company didn’t make it to the list of related brands.
Ghajini’s trump card is, of course, the Memento bit: Aamir’s Sanjay suffers from anterograde amnesia. He can remember things for only about 15 minutes and is reminded of this every 15 seconds. Yes, that is the main problem of the film. Not only does it simplify the procedures, but it makes your audience dumb, explaining the same thing over and over again.
After all, Aamir couldn’t understand Memento! So what if the tattoos on your torso are turned upside down to be read in the mirror? So what if you walk around with a Polaroid camera to click on snapshots of people and give a personal caption for future reference? So what if he’s avenging his wife’s death, has a man to kill, and is helped by another woman? So what if the only twist at the end is another memory of Memento?
Yes, yes, Mr. Khan struggled until Mr. Brain became Mr. Body. But did he really need to? Maybe because of the promotion and marketing, definitely not because of the movie. A little Uma Thurman could kill Bill and beat up his army. The roar in the “roaring rampage of revenge” should have come from within and not from those eight abs. Aamir plays it over the top, which suited Surya well in the Tamil version, but he seems hysterical here.
Is there no redemption factor during the three hours? Yes there is, and the name is Asin. We’ve had a couple of really good debuts this year at Prachi Desai and Anushka Sharma, but Asin is Bollywood’s best find in a long, long time. His character’s catchphrase in the film is: “Kalpana jadoo ki chhadi hai … Yun ghoomti hai aur sarkarein badal jaati hain.” I don’t know about the sarkars, but if Ghajini is going to stay afloat after the four-day holiday weekend, it has to be because of Asin.
In fact, Aamir-Asin’s romantic clue in the flashback is the only time you’ll find yourself laughing and smiling. Aamir, as the personable business mogul, feels much more comfortable, but it is Asin who steals the show and gives the film its best moments: the first meeting with Aamir, the help of the disabled children, the sequence of the Ambassador. She is refreshing, easy on the eyes and a contagious pack of energy.
Ghajini’s irony doesn’t end with Memento. In its own way, it is an antithesis of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. There, the common man disguised himself as a cool guy to woo the girl. Here the cool (and rich) guy disguises himself as a common man to woo the girl. While Aamir’s common man is nothing like SRK’s Suri experience, when the original chocolate boy hero says “I love you,” it still resonates louder in Bollywood.
Of course, you get help from the best people in the business to express your love. AR Rahman and Prasoon Joshi deliver once again with Behka, Guzarish and Kaise mujhe as passwords. Despite the South Indian feel of things, extras strutting in magenta jackets! – Ravi K. Chandran makes the songs look engaging, contrasting enough with the very dark and very green revenge track.
That brings us to the title character. Pradeep Rawat plays Ghajini, the guy that Sanjay has to “find and kill.” Unfortunately, Rawat (the Sikh pacemaker in Lagaan) doesn’t deserve the honor. Even Sholay wasn’t called Gabbar. And here you have the old-school villain, with his wand fetish, articulating stupid lines (Piyush Mishra dialogue) under his breath and doing his best to look evil. Jiah Khan is the other casting misstep. It’s so irritating that loud background music is often used to drown out its lines.
Ghajini achieved a U / A certificate, but it is not a good idea to take the children. Yes, most of the metal action is off-screen, but the bodies lying directly from The Exorcist, the heads turned 360 degrees, don’t make for a pretty sight. The action (Peter Heines and Stun Siva) is practical, but after Bourne and now, even Bond, it’s again a case of “I’ve seen that.”
Surely, most of you remember December 25th. But don’t be surprised if within 15 minutes of leaving theaters, they say, “Ghajini? What’s that?” Because, as Memento’s brilliant line goes, “you can’t remember forgetting” the movie.
