Leave Memento alone: Hai Guzarish!

The worst mistake you can do while watching Gajini is to compare it to Memento. It would be as asinine as comparing Sholay to The Seven Samurai. Yes the movie is inspired but it has its own soul to make comparison mindless and a futile exercise in general.

Gajini is a revenge drama with dollops of violence thrown in and some light moments intercepting the non-linear narrative. For a revenge drama to appeal, it is important that the lead character can make the audience feel empathetic to his/her crisis. This can be achieved through a mix of great acting, a ghastly villain, some truly spine-chilling moments and a touch of irony. This is where Kill-Bill made its mark. Gajini does falter on a few parameters, but has enough meat to keep it going for three hours.

Sanjay Singhania is a businessman with dreams in his eyes and heart in his head. A twist in the tale introduces him to the lovely Kalpana. Alas it was not meant to be and she is savagely murdered, while Sanjay is brutally hit on his head trying to save her. Though he survives the blow, he contracts a typical condition called anterograde amnesia short-term memory loss, where he cannot remember anything for more than 15 minutes. How Sanjay gets his revenge with the handicap forms the crux of the movie.

There have been a lot of negative reviews about the movie being over-the-top and masala in its approach. How I see it is, that Aamir Khan was due for a movie which was over-the-top and mad-cap like Andaz Apna Apna. The fine actor in him refused to play a character which he has done before, so he chose to do something which he has never done before. Play a Sunny Deol and more convincingly at that. You can see the actor in him genuinely having a ball. He punches, he gyrates, then he punches some more and then he gyrates some more. The point I am trying to make is that there are certain movies, which are beyond reviews because simply they are expected to be blockbusters. Where you are expected to whistle every time the hero makes an entry, where you enjoy his punches without questioning the logic. And before we talk of expectations which we have from Aamir Khan, the actor, let me tell you that every actor deserves this kind of fun. Amitabh Bachchan did it in Amar Akbar Anthony, Agnipath, Shaan and numerous movies. And we loved it. He fought crocodiles, killed tigers and we looked in awe. The challenge here is not whether a human can do it but it is whether Mr. Bachchan can make us believe that he could do it. And this is where I feel Aamir Khan did really well. So when he punches a guy and his face turned 3600 , I believed in it, reveled in the action and looked in awe. Call me stupid, moron, but there where atleast 150 odd people in the audience who felt the same. I heard no laughter, no chuckles.

Anyway I had a lot of fun watching the movie simply because I didn’t carry the baggage, that some of us might have.

And yes, as I said initially as well, the movie has its flaws, there are a lot of inconsistencies in the movie. I choose to ignore them simply because I see no point in nitpicking when I got my hour’s worth.

So my final verdict is, if you can just sit back and not question every scene, you’ll have fun, because Aamir Khan has carried the movie very well on his shoulder. But if you would want to analyze every scene, question every character and actions, it would be in your best interest to steer clear of Gajini and pick up a DVD of Memento. This is NOT an intelligent movie. This is Aamir Khan genuinely having fun. And this is what he wants us to do as well!