Guru- Big Man Small Story
A movie whose time has come had to be made. Guru is the story of entrepreneurial success and the man who defined it for all of us. It legitimizes using any and every mean to get what one wants. This might not have been acceptable about fifteen years ago, when India was still third world and middle class values were still bordering on un-materialistic. Today when we’re fighting global battles in business and wanting to make money is a legitimate thing to say in class, this movie tries to play to a now popular sentiment by saying that here’s a man who did it first. And how. Alas it falls flat.
For one the narrative is linear, it struggles to find enough ‘big’ episodes in the life of man who always thought big. Sometimes threatening to be a documentary, it makes desperate attempts at injecting commercial value. The songs are a glaring example. Except the main theme, all others stick out like bad share scrip. One senses that the crew knew what it wanted to say but didn’t quite manage to articulate it as well. Especially Guru’s character which in behaviour and persona is well done but fails to deliver the inner fire that drove the big Indian. Abhishek is good and versatile, playing both young man and old doyen with ease. But he fails to live the character from within and that shows amply. Weak dialogues further accentuate this.
Around him are thrown in a cluster of characters whose relationship with him is literally defined with no deeper meaning attached. Ash is passable in parts, especially ones where she’s not on screen. Mithun da’s character again promises a lot but falls flat and short of brilliance. Madhavan and the multiple sclerosis-ised Vidya Balan would not have been missed. Rajeev Menon’s treasure trove of picturesque landscape and moving near shots gets released time and again, injecting life into otherwise normal screenplay. Rehman’s music will, like all his other scores, grow on us.
The climax is a typical commercial Hindi movie one. I think Mr. Maniratnam would have wanted to move movie halls into vocal support for Gurubhai as he argues his case in front of a judicial enquiry commission, with his father’s (Big Bs) accent and a made up conviction. The end could have been the middle or even the beginning of this movie. It dangles like a lifeless limb.
This one is a one time watch for some reasons. Abhishek grows up from being a young actor to a mature one. Teenagers, whose dreams are now taking shape, need to see how bad it could have been for the earlier generation entrepreneurs. Finally for the lack of many other movie options this is a decent way to spend 150 bucks.
For one the narrative is linear, it struggles to find enough ‘big’ episodes in the life of man who always thought big. Sometimes threatening to be a documentary, it makes desperate attempts at injecting commercial value. The songs are a glaring example. Except the main theme, all others stick out like bad share scrip. One senses that the crew knew what it wanted to say but didn’t quite manage to articulate it as well. Especially Guru’s character which in behaviour and persona is well done but fails to deliver the inner fire that drove the big Indian. Abhishek is good and versatile, playing both young man and old doyen with ease. But he fails to live the character from within and that shows amply. Weak dialogues further accentuate this.
Around him are thrown in a cluster of characters whose relationship with him is literally defined with no deeper meaning attached. Ash is passable in parts, especially ones where she’s not on screen. Mithun da’s character again promises a lot but falls flat and short of brilliance. Madhavan and the multiple sclerosis-ised Vidya Balan would not have been missed. Rajeev Menon’s treasure trove of picturesque landscape and moving near shots gets released time and again, injecting life into otherwise normal screenplay. Rehman’s music will, like all his other scores, grow on us.
The climax is a typical commercial Hindi movie one. I think Mr. Maniratnam would have wanted to move movie halls into vocal support for Gurubhai as he argues his case in front of a judicial enquiry commission, with his father’s (Big Bs) accent and a made up conviction. The end could have been the middle or even the beginning of this movie. It dangles like a lifeless limb.
This one is a one time watch for some reasons. Abhishek grows up from being a young actor to a mature one. Teenagers, whose dreams are now taking shape, need to see how bad it could have been for the earlier generation entrepreneurs. Finally for the lack of many other movie options this is a decent way to spend 150 bucks.
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