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Friday flicks: Masand's Verdict
Published on Fri, May 26, 2006 at 22:30, Updated on Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 15:21 in Entertainment section
Tags: Rajeev Masand, Friday , Fanaa
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Fanaa
Starring: Aamir Khan, Kajol
Director: kunal Kohli
Alright, so it's finally here, the film we've been discussing for days now and the film we've been eager to see for some months. Hum Tum director Kunal Kohli's Fanaa starring Aamir Khan and Kajol is this week's big new Bollywood release.
At its heart, it's a love story between a blind girl from Kashmir and a tour guide she falls for on a trip to Delhi. They sing songs, they do some sight-seeing, they make love -- and then he vanishes, convincing her that he's dead.
Seven years later he runs into her again. By now she's regained her sight, she has a son from her relationship with him, but she doesn't recognise him. Oh and yes, there's one more hitch -- he's a terrorist and she doesn't know it.
Eventually he reveals to her that he's the man she loved and the father of her son, and that he's never stopped loving her. She hasn't either. The couple marries, but she still doesn't know what he does for a living. When she does stumble upon his real identity, she must ask herself if this is really the man she's always loved.
The problems in Fanaa start pouring out from the very start of the film, and most of its flaws arise from its careless script and its fractured screenplay. Now I've complained incessantly about how films like Pyare Mohan and Tom Dick And Harry are insensitive towards the handicapped, and in Fanaa, I find that the problem's a little different, but it's there nonetheless.
Kajol's mother Kiron Kher practically badgers her blind daughter into finding a soulmate when she leaves for the Capital. It seems almost obligatory for this blind girl to come back with a partner who will have her. So much so that nobody even blinks an eyelid when she's being wooed passionately by an incorrigibly flirtatious tour guide.
In fact, her friends encourage her to respond to his advances, and the parents are overjoyed when she tells them she's found a partner. I could be wrong but I find that this attitude is completely regressive...
The film's first-half in particular is campy as hell, with Aamir spouting cheesy shayiri and the kind of one-liners that make you cringe with embarrassment. And then, I suppose in these times of instant coffee and instant noodles, nobody finds it strange that this couple meet, they fall in love, and they even sleep together ALL in seven days!
Fine, but I'm not going to overlook the fact that the film is full of all these creative liberties or freakish coincidences -- call them what you may. Whether it's the fact that she miraculously gets her eyesight back after one random surgery, or that years later when he's battling for life and death whose doorstep does he land up on but hers.
Even the fact that she doesn't recognise him from his voice when she meets him years later. You know your typical Hindi films are full of such inaccuracies and liberties, but this is hardly the stuff you expect from an Aamir Khan picture which is always positioned as being more real and smarter than the rest!
My most basic problem with Fanaa really is that it's so darn boring. The film drags on and on without either purpose or plot. It's dull and it's slow and it really tests your patience because you know exactly what's going to happen, yet you have to wait for the film to unfold at it's own leisurely pace.
The screenplay is littered with songs that aren't particularly hummable and they only further slacken the film's pace. Now of the actors, Aamir Khan is efficient, but he's saddled with such a poorly-written character that you can't even blame him for failing to rise above the script.
After all, till the end of the film he seems this wishy-washy guy who can't decide if his heart is really set upon the mission that he's on, or if he's doing it because he's being made to. It is undeniably Kajol who steals the show -- not because of a sterling performance because there's no great histrionics expected here -- but because she has this presence on screen that's unparalleled by her contemporaries.
She looks a million bucks and she infuses life into that role. As for their chemistry together, alas, it just isn't there! In the end, as you leave the cinema after a screening of Fanaa, you feel almost like you're coming back from war.
It's been a loooong three hours in there, and what you remember at the end are the glaring inconsistencies... Shot remarkably by cinematographer Ravi K Chandran, the film is neatly packaged but it completely lacks soul. Then that's two out of five and a thumbs down for director Kunal Kohli's Fanaa, a film that fails to engage you. It's a disappointment, no question about it.
Rating: 2 / 5 (Average)
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