Subhash K Jha revisits another excellent film, Fanaa, which starred Aamir Khan and Kajol in this special installment of This Day That Year. Director Kunal Kohli also shares his thoughts on the film, its longevity, and its popularity with fans today.
Send up a silent prayer for rediscovering that old lost pleasure of a powerful plot that Fanaa retrieves so affectionately for us. Also, send up a prayer for an actor like Kajol, who fills up the screen with feelings and thoughts that go way beyond the tears, fears, and jeers of a workaday movie. Writer Shibani Bathija’s powerful drama about the tumultuous romance and tragedy between a blind Kashmiri girl, Zooni (Kajol), and her guide, mentor, and tormentor, Rehaan (Aamir Khan), is suffused in the silken sounds of a heart-feeling the first stirrings of love and hurt.
Kajol expresses the delicate fragrance of a blind girl’s romantic and sexual awakening in the hustle bustle of Delhi with a sure-fire sensitivity that energises the plot and gives the narrative the edge of excitement that cinematic romance captures once in a while.
Cinematographer Ravi Chandran shoots in places that the camera seldom visits. But Jatin-Lalit’s songs, though well shot, leave little lingering impact.
The romantic interludes are beautifully written. The shayari between Zooni and Rehaan flows out of the script to create an insouciant intimacy between the couple. Just when the romance builds to a quiet crescendo, director Kunal Kohli brings in huge dollops of drama. In quick succession, Zooni regains her eyesight (a medical miracle straight out of the cinema of the 1970s), loses love, returns to be with her parents in the wilderness of Kashmir (actually Poland), becomes a mother and shelters Rehaan without knowing who he is.
Oddly, the mid-section of the narrative looks like a country-cousin version of Mission Impossible. Even the background score by Salim-Sulaiman echoes Mission Impossible, making us wonder why the old-world charm of a tender romance had to be compounded by contemporary corruptibility.
Aamir Khan is certainly more at home playing the eternal romantic than the hardened terrorist. Jehad is topical, but only when the director can bring headlines into the plot without bumping into the footnotes. Aamir’s romantic scenes with Kajol convey a kaleidoscopic chemistry. A major portion of the second half is shot in a snow-swept cottage. Director Kohli uses the restricted space to great advantage, creating a domestic warmth among the four confined characters played by Aamir, Kajol, Rishi, and the delightful child actor who gets to mouth some of the most naturally endearing lines to have escaped young unschooled lips on screen.
The narrative percolates a warm glow of glamour and substance. That silly, self-conscious emptiness that had crept into recent romantic films is gone as we are swept into a stylish yet substantial kingdom of courtship and damnation.
Yet you cannot escape the web of improbabilities that creep willy-nilly into the otherwise well-ordered plot. Critical bits of the story where the female protagonist with newly-restored eyesight encounters her lost paramour in a new surrounding echo the flop Amisha Patel-starrer Humko Tumse Pyar Hai.
Aamir Khan is extremely effective in some sequences, though not consistently compelling in his various transitions and disguises. Kajol steals a march over her co-star. She goes from romantic awakening to tragedy and motherhood with skilled smoothness without ever letting her craft shine through.
But what is the astonishing Tabu doing in this film? As a government agent tracking down a dangerous Kashmiri militant, she looks as lost and anorexic as a model on the wrong ramp. Among the supporting actors, Rishi Kapoor as Kajol’s father is delightful.
As in his earlier film Mujhse Dosti Karoge, the director here makes endearing use of old film songs to bring the couple closer together. The sound of Lata Mangeshkar’s ‘Lag jaa gale se’ in the background raises the emotional level considerably.
Star-crossed love never seemed more dramatic in recent times.
Speaking to Subhash K Jha On Fanaa, director Kunal Kohli says, “I am humbled by the fact that the film has stood the test of time as has the music, which continues to live on. Jatin-Lalit’s songs were a highlight. Sadly, music has died today, as have love stories. The industry and our heroes need to revisit love stories. Romcoms like Hum Tum and intense love stories like Fanaa, both of which worked big time, unlike today’s films, which are neither romantic nor are they working. Possibly one reason is the lack of strong women characters in films of big heroes. Both Hum Tum and Fanaa had super-strong women, something today’s heroes need to let heroines be. Aamir, Salman, Shah Rukh, Ajay Devgan all had the confidence to work in films with strong female parts. That’s what made them superstars as they won the love on screen of strong women characters.”
