Monday, March 30, 2009

Ghajini

Ghajini is the title of the Indian movie I watched last night. After hearing some negative reviews, my curiosity got the better of me. Let me inform you, being of South Asian descent I am realizing it is very important, in fact crucial, for my cultural brown identity that I engross myself in anything Bollywood. I have been tested on my Bollywood knowledge by the guys my parents set me up with, and needless to say I don't pass those tests with flying colours.

So I put on the movie, as background noise, as I started to work on my sister's architecture paper last night. What can I say my sister is a slave-driver. But the movie took me by surprise, and had me watching it with my hands covering my eyes, because of all the grotesque violence, and heart on the edge. It is good cinema, and goes in the same category as Revolutionary Road, in terms of acting.

It is an action thriller about a guy who has amnesia. This part of the movie reminded me of Jason Bourne, from the Bourne trilogy. But, the element that appealed to me was the love story between the male protagonist, the Indian Bourne, and his love interest (Duh!). Theirs is the most beautiful love story I have seen in the movies recently. It had me in tears. My favourite part of the movie comes right before the following song, which I have been listening to obsessively. I tried finding the subtitles on YouTube, but clearly YouTube expects you all to understand Hindi. After all India, along with China, would be our overlord, so consider this song your first step towards learning Hindi. The song in a nutshell is about the fact that the protagonist cannot believe his luck that he managed to meet and have the love of someone so kind-hearted. It is a beautiful song, again I wish I could find the subtitles for it. Btw, the music is composed by the Slumdog Millionaire's composer and Oscar winner AR Rahman.



The movie also implicitly discussed the division between Indian socio-economic classes. Also, discussed the problem with human trafficking, and teenage prostitution. It depicts the multi-layered modern Indian society, and its contradictions.

Ghajini is an excellent movie which I highly recommend.

4 comments:

Maria Sondule said...

Lol, well, i'll get right to learning Hindi then...

Anonymous said...

yeh and now your sister is going to fail the paper you were supposed to be working on. Hope you feel good about that API!

Daisy said...

It does look good- I wish I had more access to Bollywood films, I love them whenever I do see them.

Zany said...

Maria,

LOL! While you are at it try to learn Chinese too :).

Anonymous,

I thought we had an internet moniker for you: hotchick^n, in case you forgot :P.

Daisy,

This movie has the cutest love story. The sweetest I have seen, recently. I wonder if they have Bollywood movies in Paris.