Is this overly ambitious for a commercial Hindi blockbuster? Perhaps, but the intellectual sophistication of the film-making team more or less pulls it off. Notions of love, loyalty, betrayal, patriotism, and morality get turned on their head, making for a pretty complex film. Differing perspectives of nationalism and terrorism are exploredone man's terrorist act may also be looked at as a fight for an independent homelandas well as conventional familial and romantic relationships. So what are we to think? From this point on, the film takes off into novel terrain, becoming an extremely satisfying viewing experience.
Years later, a Major Ranjeev, bearing a disturbing resemblance to the dead Rehan, shows up. Rehan is killed in a terrorist bomb blast, or so we are led to think, while the Indian authorities launch a search for the criminal mastermind that planned this and several similar attacks. Her parents agree to the match, and the footloose Rehan readies himself for marriage to just one woman. This is where I realized that the times, they are a-changing: sweet, blind (in more ways than one), sheltered Zooni is so consumed by love that she permits Rehan to bed her before he weds her, a phenomenon that is exceedingly rare (or used to be) in Hindi films. Aamir looks a bit long in the tooth to be playing Romeo, but does so gamely, and successfully gets the smitten Zooni to agree to a no-strings romance. Right off the bat, she meets a tour guide with the gift of the gab and a roving eye named Rehan Quadri (Aamir Khan), and against the better judgment of her friends, takes up with him. The storyas much as I can divulge in a reviewstarts off in fairly formulaic boy-meets-girl fashion: Zooni Ali Beg (Kajol), a beautiful blind Kashmiri young woman, comes to the big city (New Delhi, in this case) for the very first time, after having lived a sheltered, happy life in a pristine little town in Kashmir. Aided by strong writing, a different story, able direction, and slick production values, they make it an entirely worthwhile proposition. I say good for them, for this is a superb collaboration between the actors.
In addition, this is Kajol's first film after a self-imposed hiatus, while Aamir Khan, paired with her here for the first time, is also seen infrequently on screen due to his reputed fastidiousness in choosing movie projects. Any film bearing such an intriguing, if somewhat grandiose, title would have the onus of living up to enormous expectations. In Persian, Urdu, and chaste Hindi, it means "annihilated", "destroyed", or in the context of the latest offering from Yash-Raj Films, it signifies "devastated, ravaged, or consumed by love". "Fanaa" is not a word in common parlance.
0 kommentar(er)
