REVIEW: JUSTIFIES THE HYPE

Rajiv Vijayakar 

December 24, 2008 

Does Ghajini vindicate the massive hype? Does it come up to expectations - and then some more because Aamir Khan is involved? Does the remake of a Tamil hit said to be inspired by a Hollywood thriller work as a Hindi film? The answers are, resoundingly “Yes!” , “Yes!” and “Yes!”. Ghajini not only justifies the hype, but crosses even our raised expectations. It is very entertaining, funny, touching, thrilling and razor-sharp.

Meet Sunita (Jiah Khan), a medical student, who despite warnings from her professor, gets interested in the case-study of a patient named Sanjay Singhania (Aamir Khan) who suffers from anterograde amnesia (short-term memory loss), a peculiar medical condition of unknown pathogenesis wherein a patient may remember basic activities like eating and the English language, for example, but forget who and where he is after a spell as short as 15 minutes.

Sunita delves deep in the case of this man with a cropped hair and a huge scar on his head, for this condition has developed after a huge blow with a metal object. Obviously, Sanjay cannot remember what happened, despite vague flashes of someone saying the word “Ghajini” in his ear.

By a complex system of aids to memory that includes multiple tattoos on his body, Sanjay remembers faces, telephone numbers, daily activities and other important things,. He is on a ruthless mission, his final goal being finding and killing a man named Ghajini, who he knows has killed someone called Kalpana (Asin) whose murder, he knows not why, he has to avenge. When the film begins, he has found out Ghajini’s cell-phone number, and also come to know that the latter will be attending the same medical college’s function where Sunita studies, for he is the college’s regular patron and philanthropist.

An inspector on the trail of a brutal murder (of one of Ghajini’s men) follows clues and lands up in Sanjay’s house, where he discovers a diary and pieces together a significant part of Sanjay’s story.

And he finds that Sanjay is actually the super-tycoon owner of a mobile network company who was found of writing a daily diary. By an extremely rivetting series of events, he has met struggling model Kalpana and fallen deeply in love with this crazy, platinum-hearted woman and won her over by posing as a struggler himself. But the inspector does not live to tell the story as he dies in a mishap.

And then Kalpana has got into the bad books of Ghajini, who is a criminal in reality, and has to be eliminated. Sunita, delving deep into the case, pieces together these missing links and unwittingly puts Sanjay in mortal danger from Ghajini. So what happens to Sanjay’s revenge?

The best thing about the film is that all the cards are on the table at all times, so there is no suspense in the conventional sense. Everything is coherent, largely logical and well-rounded – and yet at most times we are on the edge-of-the-seat.

Cleverly, writer-director A.R.Murugadoss incorporates every commercial element and a fundamentally-routine storyline with the unusual elements of a medical thriller, a rare genre in Hindi cinema. His treatment and script are the highlights of the film. The dialogues are economical and seem spontaneous. Ravi K.Chandran’s camerawork is awesome, and the action by Peter Hein and Stun (?) Siva even if excessive is lethally effective, while the background score fits the bill.

The performances are of high-grade, with Aamir superb as expected. While as Sanjay the avenger he packs a measured mega-punch, as the super-rich man who poses as a middle-class guy for the girl he adores, the actor is a revelation in low-key brilliance.

Asin will rival Anushka Sharma of last week’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi for all the newbie awards this year – she is simply phenomenal and her Hindi is a sheer delight for an actor coming from the South – the film is in sync sound. Jiah Khan fits the bill and so does Tinnu Anand, but could they have not got a more effective villain than Pradeep Rawat?

And that brings us to the other weak points about the film that make the film lose a star. If the gratuitous violence could have been controlled, we would have welcomed it. The songs, but for “Guzarish”, are a letdown. But more importantly, a few things could have been explained more satisfactorily, like how an anterograde amnesia patient had written fundamental quotes like “Kalpana was killed” and “Revenge” on his body after the incident that caused his memory loss and the long recuperation that must have been needed to return to normalcy – was someone helping him remember? Why is Sanjay killing Ghajini’s henchmen – that too so brutally? Who maintains his palatial house? And finally, how was his ultra-muscular body acquired as well as his phenomenal strength and fighting prowess?

But no one has the time or interest to notice these flaws. After all, we are getting a generally high-grade product. And we are in an era where the overall package is more vital than the individual attributes – check Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and A Wednesday as examples. And in 2008, Ghajini is one of the best packages of overall manoranjan we have got. Go out there and savour it.

RAJSHRI.COM RATING:

What our stars mean?

: AWESOME, SO DON’T MISS
: PRETTY COOL
: WORTH A DEKKO
: WATCH IT IF YOU MUST
: THROW YOUR TICKET AWAY