FANAA: Why the furore?

It's perhaps a little late in the day to start talking about 'Fanaa'. Seems like the whole country has done the film to death and Yashraj Films has already declared it a blockbuster. But the flattering reviews the film received are a little disturbing and hence this attempt to put the it in perspective.

Aamir Khan has often stated that he chooses his scripts very carefully and doesn't simply sign films because they are big banner productions. So, when he agreed to work in Yashraj Films' 'Fanaa', one assumed that Aditya Chopra, Kunal Kohli and co. and come up with a script the picky Khan just couldn't refuse – remember, he's one of the rare actors who said no to Yash Chopra way back in 1993 for 'Darr' and hadn't worked with the banner ever since. What was equally exciting about the 'Fanaa' set-up was the comeback of Kajol, who, after reportedly turning down best friend Karan Johar, gave the nod to Kohli and agreed to work with Aamir.

So, with a film backed by the biggest banner in Bollywood, starring two of the best actors in the business and helmed by a director fresh from the success of the effervescent 'Hum Tum', 'Fanaa' had to be the most-awaited film of the year (as the Yashraj publicity machinery touted endlessly). The first 10 minutes of the film crashed my hopes and doused any expectations I may have had from the film. Picture this. A young, attractive blind girl from Kashmir, who apparently comes from a cultured and very secure environment, arrives in Delhi with a few of her classmates for a musical performance and promptly falls in love with a tourist guide who looks like a ruffian and spouts mediocre 'shaayari' to impress pretty girls. If the purported reason for the visit is a dance performance in Rashtrapati Bhavan, then why does the group spend all its time sightseeing? We see them rehearsing for the show just once, while there's a good half hour of screen time devoted to their wandering around the historic sights of Delhi.

Despite the writer's desperate effort to sketch Zooni as a fickle teenager who falls in love with the first man she bumps into in Delhi, Kajol's personality just cannot match the sheer stupidity her character displays by getting attracted to a cocky guide who brashly admits that he doesn't believe in love but believes in relationships of convenience. There's even a scene when Zooni and Rehaan (Aamir Khan) are having dinner at a dhaba and a woman apparently of questionable character (Lara Dutta) pops out of nowhere, flirts with Rehaan and disappears just as quickly. Zooni doesn't bat an eyelid, or so it seems. Her best friend, who speaks perfectly rationally and logically, is caricaturised into a comic figure whom the hero uses as a punching bag. Her teacher (Lillette Dubey hamming hopelessly) doesn't seem to have any control of the situation and merrily allows the guide to flirt with the girl in her presence. So Zooni readily falls in love with Rehaan, without a single plausible reason. Love is blind, so is she; and we accept things as they are given to us.

She spends an entire day with him where they wander around the ruins of some battle-ravaged fort, have a candle-light dinner, dance and sing in the rain and finally make love. Within a span of about four days, a young Kashmiri girl comes to Delhi, meets a man about whom she knows nothing, accepts his glib talk and develops enough confidence to go straight to bed with him. Then, she also has the courage to turn around and tell him that she expects nothing from him thereby suggesting that she is willing to accept their one-night-stand as just that and doesn't mind the fact that they may not have a future together. While this one-night-stand ploy seemed perfectly plausible in Kohli’s earlier film ‘Hum Tum’, here, given the heroine’s background and the circumstances under which she meets the hero, it’s absolutely unbelievable.

Rehaan promptly jumps on to the train when she's about to leave Delhi and eventually they both get off. Zooni calls her mother back home and tells her about this man. Like good filmi mothers, the mother (overplayed to the hilt by Kirron Kher) is ecstatic that her daughter has found the man of her dreams. Unlike most practical mothers in the real world, she doesn't ask Zooni anything about his family, his background or doesn't even take offence to the fact that her supposedly educated daughter wants to marry a tourist guide. Instead, she jumps with joy, while her hypersensitive husband (Rishi Kapoor looking lost in a part that does no justice to his talent) rushes to pack his bags for Delhi.

The first thing Rehaan does with Zooni is take her to an eye surgeon who immediately tells them that science has advanced enough to make retinal transplants possible and that the mistake people make is that they don't go to doctors to find out if there's a cure. Once again, while Rehaan so readily takes Zooni to an eye-specialist to find out if her blindness has a cure, why haven't her doting parents made any such efforts in the past? If they have, the scriptwriter doesn't feel the need to make a mention of it, thereby making Rehaan look like the perfect superhero who can get his ladylove cured of her blindness at the snap of a finger. Zooni doesn't insist that her parents be present for the surgery and it is planned in haste, even before they can arrive in Delhi.

While Zooni gets her eyesight back, there's a huge bomb explosion in which Rehaan is presumed dead and Zooni's life is shattered. The second half of the film gets even more bizarre. Zooni leads a sedate life in the snow-capped mountains of Kashmir with her father and little son whom she has named Rehaan (yes, a good 30 years after Aradhana, one-night-stands still inevitably get women pregnant, who then refuse to look at other men and continue leading lonely lives raising their sons with nobility and keeping the memory of their dead lovers alive!).

A badly injured stranger lands up at Zooni's doorstep in the middle of a blizzard and naturally, now that her eyesight is restored, her other senses have gone to sleep and hence Zooni cannot recognise the man standing before her. In between all this separation and coming together etc. there are terrorists who want an Azad Kashmir independent of India or Pakistan and are planning dangerous strikes to achieve their goals. There are deadly nuclear triggers lying in wait for the blizzard to pass. Meanwhile, Zooni and her father come and go out of the house at will – there's even enough respite for them to step out and sing a song in the snow.

Then there are the mandatory romantic sequences looking very contrived, simply because there is absolutely no chemistry between Aamir Khan and Kajol. Even a hamming-to-the-hilt Shah Rukh would have looked more comfortable in this part. Aamir looks haggard and his 'Raja Hindustani'/'Ghulam' cockiness which seemed endearing in 'Rang De Basanti', now becomes insufferable. Perhaps he should try doing something really different and let go of his inhibitions as an actor.

The whole Indian intelligence agency and its Hollywood-style operation looks fake. Tabu is totally miscast as a tough-talking agent on the trail of a dreaded terrorist while Sharat Saxena, is too ordinary an actor to be pitted as her adversary, thereby making their exchanges irritating.

To be honest, by the time Rehaan and Zooni come together and her father gets them 'married' before they break into an inane romantic song, I had completely lost interest in the film and walked out. Very rarely have I walked out of a film, but perhaps this time I went in with great expectations and was so disappointed that I just didn't care what happened next.

The only thing worth discussing about 'Fanaa' (apart from Kajol's mesmerising presence) is it's thematic similarity with Mani Ratnam's 'Dil Se', a film I had loved immensely, despite all the unflattering reviews it received. There too the premise of the film was the love story between a terrorist (Manisha Koirala) and an ordinary citizen (Shah Rukh Khan) who doesn't know her background and falls blindly in love with her. There, one could believe that Aman (SRK) could fall in love with an unknown girl without knowing much about her antecedents because the woman conducts herself with so much dignity. There is a mysterious aura around her and the man wants to know what lies behind the mask she wears. He spends a lot of time talking to her (doesn't quote B-grade shaayri) and the more questions he asks, the more cryptic she gets.

More importantly, the heroine's dilemma looks real. She is a girl from a strife-torn region who has suffered tremendous humiliation as a child and through her growing years and has then gone on to pledge her life to a terrorist outfit. And yet, when she sees a man from a totally different world – a professional living in upmarket Delhi with his doting family, who loves her beyond reason, her own conviction in the cause wavers. There are moments of indecision and self-questioning when the possibility of a tangible happy life seems a far more attractive choice than blowing oneself up for any cause. At the same time, Aman's love for her too is unwavering and totally plausible through his engagement to another girl and his brief reunion with her when she seeks refuge in his house.

One read a couple of reviews raving about Ravi K Chandran's cinematography in 'Fanaa'. But Santosh Sivan's compositions in 'Dil Se' are truly unforgettable and I can picture Ladakh as he had captured it, 8 years after the film was made. I can remember 'Dil Se' down to its smallest detail because the film left such a lasting impact on me. As for 'Fanaa', the only thing I am likely to remember is the fact that here's another film that proves how the Yashraj Films banner relies entirely on its marketing machinery and the stars it can obviously line-up at will. Perhaps they could spend some more time on finding quality script-writers who can generate genuinely engrossing plots instead of some contrived, half-baked and utterly boring concoction like ‘Fanaa’ which actually makes films like ‘Dhoom’ and ‘Salaam Namaste’ seem classy!

Deepa Gumaste