As Aamir Khan turns 60, a slew of his best known films are back in the movie theatres. Ghajini, in some subverted way, is indicative of our traumatic times. The brutal cocksureness with which the villain Ghajini (Pradeep Rawat) murders Kalpana (Asin) and pounds Sanjay Singhania’s (Aamir Khan) head to a memory mess is a telescopic view of what the sociopath can do to civil society. No one is safe from criminal attack. Not even the super-elite like Sanjay Singhania.
Ghajini, produced by Madhu Mantena and directed by A R Murugadoss, is not for the squeamish. The violence is prolonged, sadistic and often done with the elaborate abundance and eye-catching elan of a staged opera (Ravi Chandran’s camerawork glistens and bristles with optimum optical glory). And yet women in the audience seemed to love the film. Ghajini is, at heart, a love story of a cocooned tycoon who discovers love in a working-class environment. Aamir Khan’s expressions of bewilderment, curiosity, pleasure, and acceptance in Asin’s company remind you of a baby that’s just discovered mother love.
That a film as violent as Ghajini secretes such tenderness at its heart is a wonder that never ceases in the frenetic narration. Director Murugadoss is not completely successful in taking the Tamilian mood of melodramatized mayhem out of the narrative. He nevertheless succeeds in giving a compelling spin to what would have otherwise been a routine vendetta saga.
Sequences such as the one in the speeding train, where Kalpana is chased down by goons, have an edge-of-the-seat quality that elevates the potboiler plot to a level that the revenge genre in Hindi has seldom achieved. The climactic combat with the eponymous villain is staged in narrow, dusty lanes and bylanes, where the rubble and waste material become lethal weapons of attack and stock-taking. No doubt, Murugadoss is a master of violence. His eye for pain and trauma is unerring and chilling.
A lot has been said and written about Aamir Khan’s pumped-up physique. He’s wonderfully primeval as the amnesiac animal screaming in bloodcurdling isolation. But the sinewy quality in Aamir’s performance is not traceable to his muscles. It’s the way his heart beats for this unfortunate character who loses love, memory, and faith all in one swoop that makes Aamir’s performance a towering achievement. I am not too sure if the muscled look suits the actor. But his remarkable grip over his character’s graph gives the film its vaunted and vibrant feel of poetry beyond the in-your-face savagery and violence that would have otherwise become unbearably oppressive. Asin, with her gamine-like dukaan of expressions, is the female discovery of 2008. When she bows out of the plot, the lights go out. And not just from Sanjay Singhania’s life.
So is Ghajini worth that revisit to the movie theatres? A BIG YES, YES, YES!
