Does this reviewer totally forgot about the music??
" The search is more important than the destination " - a r rahman -
--- On Fri, 26/12/08, $ Pavan Kumar $ wrote:
From: $ Pavan Kumar $
Subject: [arr] India Today reviews Ghajini 3.5/5
To: arrahmanfans@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, 26 December, 2008, 10:47 AM
-
Movie: Ghajini
Director: A.R. Murugadoss
Starring: Aamir Khan, Asin, Jiah Khan
Rating:
The movie opens with Aamir Khan shoving a tap into a particularly evil looking
man's gut. There's more to come. Necks are twisted, bones crushed, iron rods
connect with heads. Imagine a South Indian movie made in Hong Kong by John
Woo's disciples and you get close to the kind of mind-bending brutality
unleashed in Ghajini.
Blood, thick, viscous and almost purple in colour, gushes from wounds. Eyes are
bloodshot. Fists are bunched and ready to fly. This is a movie harrowing in its
intensity. Yes it is adapted from Christopher Nolan's Memento and from A.R.
Murugadoss's own Tamil version, but it is also made Aamir Khan's own, with a
performance that is unflinching in its ability to absorb pain. There is the
trauma of losing his memory, of seeing his girlfriend dying in front of him, of
his own body being turned into a killing machine. Never before has a male body
been used with such force in a Bollywood movie.
This is not the glossy display of six pack abs and tightly packed butt that
we've got used to. This is the body being used in vengeance, with every scrap
of memory stored on it for recall (even the foot is not spared-the message
there says insistently 'take the camera').
The story, as probably every Googleable person knows by now, is about a tycoon
who goes on a mission to locate Ghajini, the man who killed his girlfriend and
caused him to lose his long term memory. It's told in a series of non-linear
flashbacks, the clues left in two diaries Aamir's character used to maintain,
and in a series of other visual props, Polaroid pictures, messages written on
his impressive chest, and words inscribed on every scrap of surface he can
find. And in Asin, the South Indian actor who plays his girlfriend, Aamir is
given a woman who seems worth killing for, even dying for. Channeling the other
great export from the South, Sridevi (on a very strict diet), Asin plays a
struggling model with a heart of gold. She's the kind who doesn't mind lying to
get ahead in her work, but she also helps blind people cross the road and saves
little girls from being sold for sex. She teaches our young tycoon, Aamir with
hair, how to drink tea
from a saucer and eat watermelons on the roadside. It is enough for us to
believe his hair-less avatar, screaming in almost feral anger, will go to the
ends of the earth to avenge her death.
It's a technically accomplished film. Ravi K Chandran's camera makes the old
and winding alleys of Hyderabad come alive with menace. Resul Pookutty's sound
effects, echoing every click and crunch, are note perfect. Stun Shiva and Peter
Heins have invented a new language of visceral violence-Hong Kong action cooked
on a slow burn with South Indian masala by a cook listening to some heavy
metal. The atmosphere of the film is moody in most parts, sunny in others, but
the overhang of tragedy just will not let go. But if your heart weighs heavy
when Aamir holds hands with Asin's apparition at the end of the film, complete
with sunny maple leaves falling in slow motion, just attribute it to the
performances. With every taut nerve in his face, every pinched muscle in his
body, Aamir conveys the pain of a man who is battling a loss without measure.
In Pradeep Rawat's Ghajini, though, there is a sense of disappointment. Is this
a South Indian
villain speaking in a Haryanvi accent? Or a Haryanvi villain looking very
South Indian?
Watch it, but keep a grip on your nerves. And the children safely tucked up in
bed. At home.
This is brutality, choreographed by a poet, and therefore that much more
compelling.
http://indiatoday. digitaltoday. in/index. php?option=
com_content&task=view&id=23548&issueid=85§ionid=&Itemid=1
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