so i sat up last night and watched ghajini, on the rec of my student charlie. it's supposedly the highest-grossing bollywood movie ever. it is excruciatingly bad, and i might just leave it there but i won't, of course. i should say that i don't know from bollywood, which could be part of the problem, but it will...stay that way.

one thing that's remarkable is the juxtaposition of genres. ghajini is based on memento, and (half-heartedly and half-competently) conjures up the super-dark tortured paranoid collapsing-time atmosphere of that film, but it's also a light-hearted screwball romantic comedy and a series of michael-jackson-influenced music videos and an oprah-like uplifting social commentary. the incoherence is absolute, but maybe it also accounts for the fascinating trainwrecky charm.

anyway, as a dark concept/action film it has everything that memento had except the intricate jigsaw plot, the cool cinematography, and the intelligence. it revolves the backwards time structure into a flat series of flashbacks. the super-bloody action scenes seem to be the only really decently-directed moments, and really, not so much.

the romantic comedy elements are far less believable than, say, the average sandra bullock movie, which is saying something. it's about a supposedly super-cute billionaire who meets a poor...model. together they save orphans etc. it at once gives you an absolutely uncritical cult of consumption and an unbelievably superficial commentary on the brutality and injustice of poverty. there's also no apparent actual connection between the actors, though the girl is kind of whimsically charming like bullock on a good day or whatever. the dude wears three-piece suits that also in every scene grab his biceps like a claw so you always see how buff he is, the real theme of the film, the only thing that holds it together.

so if you had an interminable sandra bullock romantic comedy juxtaposed with and ending in a bad imitation of a quentin tarantino bloodbath...but even that doesn't do the thing justice

because then there are the music videos: we just stop the film entirely and lurch into, say, a desert landscape, where the actors do pelvic thrusts in florescent polyethyline outfits to mind-numbing hindu techno. when the first one came on i thought it was a super-ironic joke or parody. by the third i was just screeching and writhing in terrible pain. the music is utterly empty, meaningless, with overthtop hyperemotional lyrics. really, india, like continental europe, should produce no popular music domestically, but import it all from us; they just have no frigging idea of any kind.

the "acting" is appalling. i guess my favorite performance was by the pop-tart/lingerie model who played a "medical student." the plausibility of her being a medical student was entirely expressed in the fact that literally every other sentence she uttered started with "as a medical student, i.." "hello, i'm a medical student and..."

the sub-titles were only sort of in english, which did help the comedy: "her trivia are priceless!": a deep expression of love.

but you know somehow i didn't turn it off. i'm not sure whether i watched it because i was charmed by the idiotic kitsch, or because i somehow got caught up in the absurd story, or because the world series is over, or because i was too demoralized to press the power button, or what. but i did watch to the ohsotragic yet uplifting end (an amnesiac birthday party at the orphanage!), rooting for the whole cast to die, painfully but forgodsake quickly (the thing is over three hours long). and i guess i learned something about art, by contrast.

Comments

[mr.fun]

is it. . .cargo cultism?

[Robert Kelly]

I don't know what this is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ItGCXr_cQ

But it's incredible. If you took Star Trek, added an XXL dose of cheese and Hindlish. Pelvic thrusts.

[Laura]

Bollywood can be an acquired taste, and it's always fun to hear what people think about the movies when they're new to them.

The often insane genre juxtaposition is part of the charm, and I thought they pulled it off nicely, actually.

Ah, the songs. After enough movies you get so used to the dance sequences you don't even notice the 37 costume changes or the transportation to Kashmir, the desert, Europe, etc...at least not in a critical way. I don't know if the version you watched had subtitles similar to the ones that were used for the theatrical release, but there is one really great part in "Guzarish" (the one in the desert) when he sings something about wanting to "spew my pearls of life upon your path." My Hindi is too poor to provide a better translation, but that one is priceless.

You know, I've always thought Aamir was a great actor. Maybe I'm just a sucker for affective realism.

I will admit that Ghajini is way too long. There were points where it made me insane how long they were dragging things out.

Anyway, if Ghajini was too ridiculous for you, other things might make your head explode, but I would encourage you to watch some other Indian films. Perhaps something Tamil or Telugu. Dickinson's library has a pretty good selection.

[Robert Kelly]

"because then there are the music videos: we just stop the film entirely and lurch into, say, a desert landscape, where the actors do pelvic thrusts in florescent polyethyline outfits to mind-numbing hindu techno. when the first one came on i thought it was a super-ironic joke or parody. by the third i was just screeching and writhing in terrible pain. the music is utterly empty, meaningless, with overthtop hyperemotional lyrics. really, india, like continental europe, should produce no popular music domestically, but import it all from us; they just have no frigging idea of any kind."

LOL

And I think they deserve the attention of American music critics, because that might be the best description of Bollywood entertainment I've read.

Some friends of mine from the country are fans of contemporary Indian party jams. They introduced me to the 2009 blockbuster Blue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_%282009_film%29), which is absolutely terrible. I would try to make sense of it but the plot is incomprehensible, prone to jumping into these dance sequences:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAnQguxKZDI

American film and music stars also show up for no real reason except to look famous and badass. The lead single was (I think) a duet between Kylie Minogue and Ashkay Kumar. The song is ridiculous, and bad even for the standards of the rest. However, some of it is really great, but I can't explain why it's appealing to me except that it's in the same way I find frivolous American pop music compulsively listenable. I don't have the aesthetic vocabulary to explain, except to say that I've got some queer attraction to polyethylene suits and artificiality, which is discernible.

But on contemporary European techno pop, you can destroy it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgmAt3-ipM4