Guru

Mani Ratnam’s much awaited movie tells the story of a villager, visionary and winner as the much repeated tagline says. It is quite a damp one in my opinion. If you haven’t still seen it, stop reading this post as there are SPOILERS AHEAD.

Guru is a loosely disguised version of the story of the founder of one of India’s largest private sector companies – Reliance, and Dhirubhai. The references are all there and in some cases, the real references are used too – Burmah Shell, etc. The locations are changed a bit – Turkey instead of the Gulf, etc,… But the polyester bit, etc remain. Aishwarya’s role in the beginning is quite cool, but towards the end of the movie, she is mostly a part of the scenery. Mithun Chakraborty essays the role of what was perhaps Goenka and the Indian Express as opposed to Manickdas Gupta and the Independent in the movie. Mithun da essays a decent , small but important role whereas Vidhya Balan is thoroughly wasted. Madhavan looks trim. That is the most I can say of his role.

The music by Rahman is as good as it usually is by Rahman. Mani Ratnam’s regular team of Sreeram, Rajiv Menon, etc return to produce great work although most of the good cinematic work is in the initial reels when Guru is in Turkey. Mallika Sherawat does what is expected – an item no. Abhishek Bachan is good in parts – For some reason, he is smiling good heartedly in the initial reels, while his smile almost disappears post the interval – Is that supposed to signify some change of personality?

Just like the Indian cricket team, I want everything and more from our good film makers – to that aim, Guru is well short. In fact except for the soundtrack, which could have perhaps done with less of the percussion and the chants of Gurubhai, Gurubhai, etc in Gujarati, nothing else is in the Mani Rathnam class.

I had seen Mani explain to someone on TV that it would be a crowd pleaser. Not sure about that, but Guru does have some one liners which are delivered in style, mostly by Abhishek and mostly in the first half. As someone from my family said, the movie loses steam after the interval. See it, even if you wanted to see it just because everyone else will. But I wouldn’t recommend it.