Ghajini - a review

This time, for a change, I thought of posting a film - review written by my elder son Dr. Amit Shesh, who apart from being a movie buff is an assistant professor in Computer Graphics at Illinois State University. I & my wife Alka are presently staying with him at Normal Illinois USA and we saw "GHAJINI" together.
I like his incisive writing and you could visit his blog at http://www.amitshesh.blogspot.com/ for many other film reviews and writings.

So here goes...

G H A J I N I

Watch Ghajini, if not for the story, then just to see Aamir Khan in a role you have never seen him in.Ghajini, as is popularly touted, is an out-and-out masala action thriller. But the basic premise is interesting as well--a person with extreme short-term memory loss trying to avenge the death of a dear one. Its the short-term memory loss part that is both intriguing and controversial, as Ghajini shares this theme with a popular Hollywood movie, Memento.After having seen both, I'm inclined to say that although the basic premise of both movies is the same, the makers of Ghajini have added enough originality in the script to make it substantially different from Memento. While the strengths of Memento were its extremely innovative screenplay and the convoluted plot, the strengths of Ghajini are its rawness, intensity and performances. In any case a direct rip-off of Memento would never work in Hindi.What makes Ghajini stand apart is the sheer ruthlessness of the character of Aamir Khan post his tragedy. The whole movie is centered around the fact that the protagonist develops an almost animal-like instinct to hunt and kill while simultaneously forgetting the very purpose of being that way. Every day for Sanjay Singhania begins with being puzzled at where he is, and then reading the clues that he has left for himself to remind what the new purpose of his life is.The two strengths of the movie are its screenplay, and Aamir Khan. The current story and the flashback making the current story relevant are woven very nicely in the movie, especially the way in which the flashback is woven into the narration. This is further enhanced by some slick editing that keeps the audience gripped for most of the movie. Particularly impressive are the seemingly irritating and faulty parts of the movie that eventually reveal their purpose in the overall scheme of things. The short-term memory loss could have left too many threads unfinished given Bollywood's conventional inability to be logical, but the script is watertight for the most part and that is commendable.This role is a first for Aamir Khan, and he comes close to playing a double-role. His previous and current selves are extremely contradictory, and as good as Aamir Khan has been in romantic roles, I was always left wanting for more of his murderous side. Like Saif in Omkara, Aamir's appearance does half the convincing about he being a killing machine. The other half of course, are Aamir's extremely intense moments in the movie where he acts animalistic, revengeful and almost insane simultaneously. And its one of the rare movies in Bollywood, where shots about the protagonist exercising and flexing his muscles are very relevant to setting up his character, and not simply a crowd-pulling stunt. For his killings are quite raw. Some of the action sequences are very filmy, but overall Aamir Khan's character does look invincible.The romantic flashback of the movie, although critical to the story, proves to be the bane. Some sequences are stretched too much possibly to make the movie an all-encompassing entertainer, and leave the audience wanting for the original focus of the movie--revenge. And the songs are especially distracting. Not only are they insipid to listen to, they unnecesarily portray Aamir Khan as a muscular lover-boy. I would much rather watch him kill a couple more :-)The film also seems somewhat incomplete because the two facets of Sanjay Singhania's character are not linked together enough. It is a given that he transforms from a quiet suave businessman to a killer; no elaboration is provided on how this transformation takes place, and why he has taken it upon himself to avenge the tragedy.In spite of these shortcomings, Ghajini is eminently watchable for its good screenplay, taut script and good acting. At last an action movie that is not completely filmy!

Why are divorce rates in India so low??

Divorce rate in any group is usually measured in terms of "number of divorces in a year per 1000 married women". We do not know however if the available data on "divorces" in different countries has indeed been calculated according to this standard definition. In USA, (the world's divorce "capital" - if I may call it so) this rate is measured in terms of percentage of new marriages that end up in divorce in the first three years. Whichever way you look at it the rate of divorces in India is the LOWEST.

Against 54% in USA, the rate of divorces in India is just 1.4%.

It is 37% in Canada, 39% in Germany, 43% in UK, 43% in Russia & 55% in Sweden. In Japan however it is only 2%. Does it then have something to do with Eastern vs the Western culture? I think it does.... though I am not sure if it is going to remain so...

Culture: In India, marriages are expected to last a life time. Ceremonies like karvaa chauth (करवा चौथ) or worshipping the banyan tree (वड सावित्री पूजा ) are supposedly powerful prayers to GOD to ensure that the couple remains married to each other in this and seven subsequent rebirths. It is a different matter though that both these rituals are meant only for women - does it mean that we Hindu men have a lurking desire to seek another partner in another birth (isn't variety the spice of life?). Though the attitude is gradually changing, divorced people are still looked down upon by the society. Divorce is undoubtedly looked upon as absolutely the last resort (especially by women) and there are still couples who would rather stay apart without divorcing than obtaining a legal separation.

Financial empowerment: Since India is such a male dominated society and since women (especially rural women) are rarely financially independent, I feel many of them choose to continue suffering bad husbands (and hence don't get included in the divorce statistics) instead of facing the "outside world", which for a single woman, could be even worse. In the western world, women are equally literate and financially sound as men and therefore have much lesser hesitation in dissolving a bad marriage. In the next fifty years or so, Indian women are expected to "catch up" (the urban ones already have) with males and I predict that divorce rates would then shoot up. If in spite of empowering our women, the divorce rates remain lower than in the west, then surely we could ascribe this to our strong family based culture.

Importance of a family: In recent years the church has often been reminding its followers in the West that the "family" is an important social unit and must be preserved. In the western society, most children leave their parents around the time they pass out of high school. Thereafter parents have virtually no role to play in major decisions in the life of their offspring. Parents do not expect their children to take care of them in their old age (because these parents had not shouldered this responsibility for their parents). Since divorce rates are above 50%, there are good chances that parents might get divorced and marry new spouses - the children themselves in the meantime could have married and divorced. The original family could thus be in tatters -unrecognizable and sometimes impersonal. Add to this concoction, live-in relationships & multi racial marriages and you could see why so many people have a number of half and even one-fourth (though they are never called so) brothers and sisters
& cousins (President -elect Obama for example has many half brothers and sisters). The Indian family (though under tremendous strain with increasing industrialization) is still a comparatively cohesive unit on which members can fall back upon in difficult times. It is ironical that while we are blindly aping the wrong western practices, they are looking up to our strong family ties as a role model.

Importance of having children: The birth rate in India is 24.8 per 1000 (death rate is 8.7 per 1000) while that in USA is 14.2 per 1000 (death rate is 8.9 per 1000). In some European countries there has been a net decline in population because there are more deaths than births in any given year. Governments there offer incentives to citizens to produce more children (In a lighter vein, I often wonder why they don't outsource this to India). Indians look upon children as a "support in their old age and a son is even today more valuable than a daughter. I do not know of another country (I may be wrong here) that makes it legally mandatory for children to take care of their old parents. As long as India continues to produce more children per 1000, it will also automatically strive to preserve the family system (which nurtures children) and this would keep the divorce rate low.

Attitude towards 'SEX' : In India, marriage is still a socially approved licence to fulfill this biological need. Various surveys have however concluded that this assumption has "crumbled" in urban areas. The average age for the first sexual experience in India has apparently come down to 14 in metropolitan cities - but I would still venture to say that pre-marital sex though on the rise has still not become as fashionable and therefore rampant, as in the west. Youngsters who have grown up in an environment where pre marital sex is not unduly frowned upon, cannot suddenly change their mindset after marriage. Westerners therefore look at 'sex' more "biologically" and less emotionally than their eastern counterparts. A society that has more of this biological attitude (feel thirsty - quench it) is bound to have a larger number of strained marriages due to higher infidelity. So until India continues to societally frown on pre marital sex and sex -outside marriage, its divorce rates are likely to remain lower. Increasing prosperity will of course increase personal independence and an independent person will be less afraid of "societal" or even "parental" frowning that we are talking about.

In conclusion, I am sure that increasing prosperity (GDP per capita), increasing women empowerment (higher literacy and incomes) and crumbling of the traditional family system is bound to increase divorce rates in India - societies react similarly to similar situations and we are bound to follow what the westerners went through during their upward economic march. It is then that the great Indian culture will face its most severe test.