Selective Amnesia

Ghazni, Godfather and a lesson in lost opportunities

But first, a round up of the Deepavali Chennai Bloggers Meet.
Throw in 11 people, one empty flat (courtesy Vaijayanthi) with a private terrace, the sea in the not too distant place, some nice chill breeze, a Smirnoff for those who like it, and Pepsi for the rest, season it with flaming fireworks, and you get a fantastic way to spend an evening. Especially if you end it up with a movie that shows lot of promise.

Report on the Chennai Blog Meet here.
Krithiga, the puttu was damn good.

As to the title,
The Blog meet broke up at a time approaching 8. Sudermani had some tickets for Ghazni and wanted to know if I was interested. I was, for I hadn’t yet seen the movie.
The movie itself is pretty watchable. Especially if you haven’t seen Memento. Especially if you suffer from short term memory loss and nothing in the movie makes sense.

Oh all right! I liked the movie. The movie began with a good promise. Great camera work and editing, nice lighting and all. The story too showed brilliant promise. Somebody out for revenge and means to get it. Yes! All well and good. Only, if they didn’t go about it in so ham-my a way.
Most things in the movie is good. Except the ending.

I seriously think that very few Tamil Movie makers know how to end a movie. A climax scene is where you crown the whole piece. You want to end with a flourish, either by escalating the tension, or dampening it. Either of which is okay for me. But not a sentimental, wimpy, melodramatic ending, sorry! No, it doesn’t do for me.

Surya could do with taking a piece out of Kamal Hassan when he wishes to play a mentally retarded/deficient/screwed up character. For that matter, any body could benefit from Kamal’s example, including himself. But that is neither here, nor there.

Oh, another thing. I really am not a fan of heaving thighs and flabby paunches. If you do want to include a item number, can you please arrange for someone who is atleast good looking. Better still, why don’t we make away with that entire idea? Please!

I digress, but for a good cause. Back to the title. The movie Ghazni ended at roughly 2. Thanks to Shyam, who very generously offered to drop Prabhu and me back, we made it to distant Saligramam in about 15 minutes.
Just in time, as it turned out, for Godfather I on HBO.

Now, here’s a movie that could have been a Ghazni. Here’s a movie that could have even been a Nayagan. But it wasn’t. And it so emphatically wasn’t, I am not surprised nobody thinks of how wrong it could have gone. Everything in that movie could have been reduced to sham – Michael Corleone’s original intentions and his final acceptance of the family’s way of life. His desire for revenge. His way of getting it.

Ghazni and Godfather are similar in that the both the heroes want revenge of a wronged death and will have it at whatever cost. But while Michael is pure brilliance and strategy, great support and firepower, Sanjay is just a guy with short term memory loss, some bewildered shaking of the head and a Polaroid camera.
Add to it, some moderate acting support from the typical villains and one misguided “college” girl, you have a movie that doesn’t live up to its hype, nor to its very good start.
And this can be traced to one simple piece of paper – the screenplay.