Boouuuuuu! The-man-who-cannot-do-evil has messed it up. Maane tu yaa maane naa, Ghajini is a step back for the man who made Taare Zameen Par. Aamir Khan, you didn’t need to do this. Especially not now. I hope the members of the Academy don’t get a print or a copy of his new movie. Otherwise, they are bound to have short-term memory loss about India’s chances at the Oscars this year.
Isn’t it ironic that the movie that changed the way movies were made in Hollywood has become a 180-minute showcase of early movie-making in Bollywood? The mother of all mind-bending, 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 total lack of intelligence of the script.
Incredible as it sounds, coming from the little big man, Ghajini is nothing more than a B-grade masala revenge drama from the 80s. The ones where the dying man whispers the villain’s name to the hero just before he disappears. Or where the flashback dissolved into the pages of a diary. Or where the villain and his jovial men with flowerpot hairstyles walked the streets with metal fences. In fact, there are so many of those bars that we wonder how a steel company didn’t make the brand linkage list.
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 proceedings, but it makes its audience dumb, explaining the same thing over and over again.
After all, Aamir couldn’t understand Memento! So what if the tattoos on his torso are upside down to be read in the mirror? So what if he walks around with a Polaroid camera to click on people’s snapshots and give a personal caption for future reference? So what if he is avenging the death of his wife, he has a man to kill and he is aided by another woman? So what if the only twist at the end is another Memento flashback?
Yes, yes, Mr. Khan sweated until Mr. Brain became Mr. Body. But did he really need to do it? Maybe because of the promotion and marketing part, definitely not because of the movie. A little Uma Thurman could kill Bill and beat up his army. The roar in the “revenge rampage roar” should have come from within and not from those eight pack abs. Aamir plays it over the top, which suited Surya in the Tamil version, but he seems hysterical here.
Is there no redeeming factor through the three hours? Yes, there is, and the name is Asin. We’ve had a couple of really good debuts this year in Prachi Desai and Anushka Sharma, but Asin is the best Bollywood find in a long, long time. His character’s catchphrase in the film reads: “Kalpana jadoo ki chhadi hai… Yun ghoomti hai aur sarkarein badal jaati hain”. I don’t know about the sarkars, but if Ghajini wants to stay afloat after the four-day bank holiday weekend, it has to be thanks to Asin.
In fact, Aamir-Asin’s romantic hint in the flashback is the only time you’ll find yourself laughing and smiling. Aamir, as the business tycoon, is 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 Ambassador sequence . She is refreshing, easy on the eyes, and a bundle of contagious energy.
Ghajini’s irony does not end with Memento. In his own way, he 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 everyman is nothing like SRK’s Suri experience, when the original chocolate boy hero says “I love you,” he resonates even more strongly with Bollywood.
Of course, you get help from the best people in the business to express your love. AR Rahman and Prasoon Joshi once again meet Behka, Guzarish and Kaise mujhe as passwords. Despite the South Indian feel, the extras strut around in magenta jackets! – Ravi K. Chandran makes the songs seem engaging, contrasting just enough with the very somber, very green revenge track.
That brings us to the title character. Pradeep Rawat plays Ghajini, the guy Sanjay has to “find and kill.” Unfortunately, Rawat (the Sikh pacemaker at Lagaan) does not deserve the honor. Not even Sholay was called Gabbar. And here you have the old school villain, with his rod fetish, mouthing goofy lines (Piyush Mishra dialogue) under his breath and doing his best to look evil. Jiah Khan is the other casting misstep. She is so annoying that she often uses loud background music to drown out her lines.
Ghajini got a U/A certificate but it’s not a good idea to take the kids. Yes, most of the metal action is off screen, but the bodies lying around like something out of The Exorcist, heads turned 360 degrees, are not a pretty sight. The action (Peter Heines and Stun Siva) is hands-on, but after Bourne and now even Bond, it’s again a case of having seen it there.
Surely, most of you remember December 25. But don’t be surprised if within 15 minutes of leaving theaters, you’re like, “Ghajini? What’s that?” Because as the bright line in Memento says, “you can’t remember to forget” the movie.