Revisiting Ghajini

It’s been nearly a year since Aamir Khan released Ghajini, and I thought, a few nights away from the release of 3 Idiots, I’d post an old piece on this film that originally appeared on NG. My impression on Ghajini remains pretty much the same, although, reflecting on Aamir’s journey within this decade, I’ve grown far more fond of the place this film has in his rather impressive professional arc.

Ghajini, A.R. Murugadoss’ second crack at Christopher Nolan’s 2000 neo-noir masterwork, Memento—this time in Hindi—is an angry, restless affair. The film, like its Tamil predecessor, is unquestionably the work of a man who knows his 80s Tamil masala filmmaking, with an emphasis on the films of Rajinikanth and Kamal Hasan. There is something for everyone here, and yet, the filmmaking aesthetic rarely matches the storytelling ambition (as it also didn’t in the original Tamil) and the result is a Varma-esque attempt at masala posturing and caricature that, for all its bluster and noise, can’t summon a powerful emotional tide. The central force in this film is a short-term memory loss patient played by the most important and influential Hindi film star of our time. That Aamir Khan deserves this massy, star moment is beyond question—he has done more successful envelope-pushing for our cinema than any other star-actor on his level, and it’s heartening to see that such a witless, depoliticized film of his can be met with such ferocious mass fanfare. I just wish the film itself didn’t have all the subtlety of an iron rod to the head.

It’s fair to argue, of course, that subtlety has no place in a masala actioner like this. It’s also fair to suggest that the history that this film is founded on straitjackets it in some ways. The Tamil mainstream films of the 80s—and even today—had a very identifiable, very broad structure. The films took an episodic approach to narrative—with clean, jarring cuts between the comedy and the drama and the music and the action. The overall narrative was, then, a like an intricate chamber with many entry points and paths, and one could walk into the movie hall at any point during a screening and maybe go along for the ride. The animated title sequence of Murugadoss’ film is on the one hand a graphic depiction of neural pathways, but also, perhaps figuratively, narrative pathways. What the director has done with this film is to use the transient nature of the lead character’s existence in order to support the old school narrative structure. Memory gained through amnesia, so to speak.

The irony ends there. I completely agree with Baradwaj Rangan in his review of the Hindi remake to the extent that if you have seen the Tamil film, there really is nothing all that new to find here. I found Surya’s performance as Sanjay Ramasamy much more even and more effective (if not exactly as affecting) when compared to Aamir Khan’s Sanjay Singhania. Contrary to the prevailing critical mood, I found Aamir pretty underwhelming here. There are two real “halves” to this performance—often intercut within the narrative—and these can be neatly labeled as the pre-accident Sanjay and the post-accident Sanjay. Before he and his girlfriend, Kalpana, (Asin) are brutally attacked, Sanjay is an unusually flighty tycoon fond of a repetitive wardrobe involving bicep-displaying, semi-formal wear. (This is courtesy of Van Huesen, we are told at the pre-title corporate lovefest—the company is also plugged in dialogue at some point!) The original pre-accident Sanjay gave Surya a platform to give us an authoritative, subdued romantic figure. Here, Aamir takes his cue from Surya but is, in fact, so subdued that he risks vanishing off the screen. It is of course Asin’s romantic foil that takes center stage in these extended flashback sequences (which is often when the music and comedic episodes emerge) but without seeing both sides of the romance, it’s hard to be completely on board. In this regard, the problem I had with the original was amplified here. I understood why Sanjay would fall head over heels for this charismatic, improbably hot saint—but I had trouble understanding why on earth Kalpana would consider romancing someone so woefully doe-eyed.

The sequences in the present are more effective for both Aamir and the film in that they present a worldview more defined and interesting than what we get in the flashbacks. The most atmospheric and transporting moments occur in the silences between the action when Sanjay roams around, puzzled, trying to understand who and where he is. In Nolan’s Memento, one of the most memorable pieces of dialog occurs when a character asks Guy Pearce’s Leonard (the Sanjay of that film) what his condition feels like. Leonard responds that “it’s like waking up.” Ghajini makes literal this dialogue by showing Sanjay rising up from bed in his flat (more a lair than an apartment) and walking around in childlike wonderment until all the meticulously placed signs in his home—and his heavily tattooed body—leads him back to the moment of violence that took everything from him, and instantly unleashes the vengeful monster within. While Aamir looks more than a bit silly writhing about and screaming in anguish, the silences, the awkward and horrific realizations are a moving sight. The scenes here are immeasurably aided by the masterful cinematographer Ravi K. Chandran, who makes far more of an effort in giving us two distinctive—if obvious—visual strategies that address and support the atmosphere of both “halves” of the film.

Chandran also ups the sheen of the remake in his realization of the action sequences in this version—which are in every way slicker and more energetic. In these sequences, it’s also crystal clear where Murgadoss’ real interests lie. The lovey-dovey stuff we see in the flashbacks are strangely listless and were it not for Asin’s charming performance, they would have been pretty much inert. The song sequences are simply disappointingly conceived. But when we see Sanjay stalking and growling down the dark city streets or opening up a serious can on legions of goons, the filmmaking shakes out of its daze and snaps into attention. The single greatest scene in the film is a superb climatic chase and fight sequence where Aamir lays waste to goonda after goonda in a torrent of violence. After the battle, our protagonist once again loses his memory. He looks around at the men he’s just put down, and finds himself standing within an intricate, claustrophobic series of alleyways that in every way recalls the title sequence graphics in its image of tentacle-like paths and interconnected spaces. Sanjay wanders around these spaces, lost, alone and moments away from exacting his sweet, violent revenge on the film’s eponymous villain (a still awful Pradeep Rawat). For a moment, we share Sanjay’s affliction and forget that the rest of Ghajini isn’t nearly as engaging as this single, brilliantly conceived scene.