Guru
Guru
An exceptional new movie from Bollywood.
“The flamboyantly gifted Indian moviemaker Mani Ratnam has an epic romantic temperament, like a reform-minded 19th century novelist, with a great eye and a trunk full of Panavision lenese. In his most characteristic works, such as Bombay (1995) and Dil Se (From the Heart, 2002), he places intimate personal stories at the eye of the storm in sweeping political and social dramas. Ratnam’s enthralling and eventful new picture, Guru, is one of his best yet; in fact it may be the best Indian commercial (“Bollywood”) movie since the Oscar-nominated Lagaan (2000). Inspired by the rags to riches story of a real-life Indian petrochemical tycoon, the late Dhirajlal “Dhirubhai” Ambani, it’s a realistically textured biographical thriller staged on an operatic scale. It aims at nothing less than the canonization of a new type of cultural icon for post-socialist India. Re-named Gurukant “Gurubhai” Desai and played with an exhilarating mixture of high-stepping enjoyment and focused determination by Abishek Bachchan, the movie’s Ambani surrogate is a village boy who lays the groundwork for a huge company simply by pouncing on opportunities that others miss. We enjoy rooting for this enterprising businessman hero, and not just because we identify with the character’s delight at working out a clever new way to avoid paying excise taxes. He’s a hero not in spite of the fact that he’s a crafty corporate Capitalist but because of it — because his textile factories have created tens of thousands of jobs, and because the ordinary people he recruited as shareholders have been hoisted out of poverty by his success. Some elements of Desai’s story test positive for sentimentality, including his playful, ardent relationship with his plucky wife (Aishwarya Rai). The failure to make the private lives of the characters resonate with the main story is an unusual one for Ratnam, owing perhaps to his overriding drive to valorize Guru as a positive force in Indian public life. But the film is a triumph of casting: In a role that is often about the sheer steamrolling force of his character’s personality, Abishek Bachchan’s attention to detail makes Guru accessible rather than intimidating, admirable but also plausible. In the end this Guru is just like one of us, only richer.” (David Chute, L.A. Weekly)
“The flamboyantly gifted Indian moviemaker Mani Ratnam has an epic romantic temperament, like a reform-minded 19th century novelist, with a great eye and a trunk full of Panavision lenese. In his most characteristic works, such as Bombay (1995) and Dil Se (From the Heart, 2002), he places intimate personal stories at the eye of the storm in sweeping political and social dramas. Ratnam’s enthralling and eventful new picture, Guru, is one of his best yet; in fact it may be the best Indian commercial (“Bollywood”) movie since the Oscar-nominated Lagaan (2000). Inspired by the rags to riches story of a real-life Indian petrochemical tycoon, the late Dhirajlal “Dhirubhai” Ambani, it’s a realistically textured biographical thriller staged on an operatic scale. It aims at nothing less than the canonization of a new type of cultural icon for post-socialist India. Re-named Gurukant “Gurubhai” Desai and played with an exhilarating mixture of high-stepping enjoyment and focused determination by Abishek Bachchan, the movie’s Ambani surrogate is a village boy who lays the groundwork for a huge company simply by pouncing on opportunities that others miss. We enjoy rooting for this enterprising businessman hero, and not just because we identify with the character’s delight at working out a clever new way to avoid paying excise taxes. He’s a hero not in spite of the fact that he’s a crafty corporate Capitalist but because of it — because his textile factories have created tens of thousands of jobs, and because the ordinary people he recruited as shareholders have been hoisted out of poverty by his success. Some elements of Desai’s story test positive for sentimentality, including his playful, ardent relationship with his plucky wife (Aishwarya Rai). The failure to make the private lives of the characters resonate with the main story is an unusual one for Ratnam, owing perhaps to his overriding drive to valorize Guru as a positive force in Indian public life. But the film is a triumph of casting: In a role that is often about the sheer steamrolling force of his character’s personality, Abishek Bachchan’s attention to detail makes Guru accessible rather than intimidating, admirable but also plausible. In the end this Guru is just like one of us, only richer.” (David Chute, L.A. Weekly)
Language
Hindi
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