Guru marries Sujata, a daughter of a wealthy money lender and whose recently been ditched by her lover. They go to Mumbai to setup a business against the wishes of Guru’s father. In Mumbai Guru faces all sorts of hurdles attempting to setting up his business and meets Manikdas Gupta who runs a newspaper ‘The Independent’ who helps Guru in voicing his concerns through his newspaper. Meenakshi aka Meenu is Manikdas’ is the differently abled terminally ill granddaughter of Manikdas aka Nanaji.
Guru setups a strong business empire and in the process breaks a few laws in a system that his largely sided with the one’s that have money. This causes concern in Manikdas who’s straight as an arrow approach towards life makes him despise Guru and enlists Shyam Saxena, a successful journalist, in exposing Guru. Meenu meanwhile marries Shyam and lives the remaining days of her life in his company.
What happens to Guru and his empire? That’s for the audience to see in the theaters. “Sapna nahi dekhna, sapnay kabhi sach nahi hothay” – this is the line Guru speaks as the movie opens in an empty cricket stadium. That sets the tone for the movie and the things to come because we know right then the futility of that line somehow. Gurukant Desai is the character handled by Abishek Bachchan and does he do a wonderful job? Oh yes he does, this is his best performance till date. He displays variety, range and a certain aura which binds us to his character.
Mithun Chakraborthy plays the role of Manikdas Gupta. I wish Mithunda does more character roles in movies, but it’s hard to get a character of such depth and substance. He plays the role perfectly and still has an immense screen presence. Aishwarya Rai plays the character of Sujata, surprisingly for a cynic like me who has never like any of the acting she’s done in the past except her dancing skills, this turns out to be a better performance. The deglamourized Aishwarya works well in the movie and I am sure a lot of hard work has gone into her character and role.
Madhavan walks the character of Shyam Saxena which looks easy to play but there’s a lot of subtle things he does proving his experience in the Mani Ratnam production unit. Vidya Balan essays the role of Meenakshi, this is one capable actor we all want to see more. No running around, no dancing but perched on a wheel chair, she emotes well and has a wonderful voice. All other characters are dealt with by talented people and veterans and full marks to the director in selecting this cast. No song till now has done justice to Mallika as ‘Mayya mayya’ in this movie. This song is sensuous, well lit and shot and has good dance too. It’s not vulgar and arousing like item numbers are these days. We can’t expect any less from the badshah of item numbers Mr.Mani Ratnam.
Rajiv Menon’s camera captures the proceedings accurately and innovatively. This man is not only a good director and singer but also an exceptionally talented cinematographer. The last time Rajiv and Mani came together, Bombay happened. Though the expectations on the second outing could have been huge, Rajiv has equaled them if not surpassed. Look out for lights on temple dooms, light reflections on pillars and the way the Turkish Church is lit up for ‘Mayya mayya’. Sreekar Prasad’s editing is not sharp in the sense that we know how it is in the movies in the past 2 – 3 yrs. Transitions between scenes are not swish-zoom-tak but more subdued and laidback, I guess the subject deserves this kind of treatment. I am sure he’s also ruthlessly chopped out some scenes from the movie, for example, the following scene did not feature in the movie at all.
Samir Chanda’s 20 yr experience shows in the production design. Except for the tram in the Mumbai scene in the beginning, which I thought was a bit too tacky and unreal, everything else about this production is superlative. To believe that the sets were put up in the Binny mills compound in Chennai is tough, it’s so real and fits the period. The train in the movie from the 50’s looks real too. Sridhar (a Mani regular) captures and recreates the necessary aural ambience and the dts mix is not distracting at all. Not sure if they used sync sound, my logic says that the dialogs are dubbed.
AR Rahman, the musical genius weaves a score that at once melodic, periodic and inventive. How I wish producers would give him all the time he needs to work on music. The result can’t get any better than this. A musical from Mani with AR Rahman writing tunes is the best it can get in terms of music in India. All songs fit into the story and the background score needs a separate review of it’s own. Like with all Mani movies this movie has a song too which is not featured in the audio release. This song is used for Meenu’s character.
Mani has a unique way of portraying relationships on screen. Be it husband-wife, father-children or friends, all relationships he films are so real and unique. There's this bedroom scene in this movie where Guru and Sujata are beating each other in a playful manner, who could imagine intimacy can be shown in such weird yet effective manner. Shyam proposing to Meenu and ultimately kissing her after she gives her consent is another intensely romantic scene. The same can be said about the bonding generated between Manikdas and Guru and the lack of that between Guru and his Father. Humor has been woven into the screenplay and dialogs and some lines will hold you in splits.
This movie is a Mani Ratnam movie. I can simply stop my case with this one line. Only this man can take characters from real life, fictionalize them and present them on screen as an entertaining movie. Mani the auteur is the brain behind Guru. Every frame bears his signature, every character is imprinted with his DNA. When you have a good leader, you have a team have team that excels in what it does. That’s the success behind such a nice product, Mani motivates, taunts, guides and extracts the best from each of his team members and the result is there for all to see.
Guru, I am speculating is going to be the launch of Mani into big league Bollywood (in terms of box office collections). He deserves every bit of that attention and he’s delivered a decent movie that’s not void of cinematic elements but are set in an ambience that’s as real as Bollywood can get. Way to go Mani, let’s wait for Lajjo now. This movie is going to be a blockbuster.
Trivia
# The song ‘Barso re’ opens in Athirapilly falls. No matter how many times we see this location, when it’s canned by Rajiv Menon it does look a bit more spectacular. I am sure the remaining locations are somewhere in Kerala too.
# Thirumalainaicker Mahal is the location where ‘Tere bina’ was shot. This is the same location that Mani used in ‘Iruvar’ in the scenes featuring Prakash Raj and Mohanlal.
# There’s this scene almost in the middle of the movie where Abhishekh is talking to Mithun about his means of growing business and Vidya gives a wry smile and Abhishek returns it. Both actors display brilliance in emoting.
# Binny mills compound in Chennai is the same location where the climax for ‘Vettaiyadu Villayaadu’ was shot recently. It’s a big chunk of real estate right in the middle of Chennai city.
# The titles of this movie is very innovative, a big round of applause to the visual team that conceptualized and executed it.
# Gurubhai (as Abhishek is called in the movie) resembles Dhirubhai, but this is coincidental as is The Independent to The Indian Express. Manikdas Gupta is not Ramnath Goenka and Shyam Saxena is not S Gurumurthy. As Mani's first frame says, "Any resemblance to characters in real life is coincidental".
