Statutory warning- Those who havent seen 'The Memento' or 'Ghajini' do not read my blog..i mean do not read itas of now...but do read it after you have seen both the movies...
The Memento-
Never have i seen a movie with directional brilliance to match the stature of The Memento enacted brilliantly by Guy Pearce - 'Leonard Shelby' - Cristopher Nolan, the director has a flair of movie telling which is proven from his history - 'The Dark Knight' and 'The Prestige'...
Coming back to the movie the marvel of the story is in the fact that it shows the climax and the beginning in two back to back scenes and the movie proceeds to the centre...with the present past in colour and the past future in black and white. in simple words it's like burning a candle from both ends...an important fact is that this low budget cult film had a very lukewarm opening and it didnt have many distributors as well but it turned out to be in the list of the top ten revenue grosser's with its major publicity being word of mouth.
The Plot-
Leonard is an insurance investigator whose memory has been damaged by a head injury he sustained after intervening on his wife's murder.His quality of life has been severly hampered after this event and he can now only live a comprehendable life by tatooing notes on himself and taking pictures with his polaroid camera. Since the incident he could not form any new memories so he arranged the jigsaw puzzle of his life through these major events but he conveniently and invariably forgot the intricate details. It's like refreshing the screen of your browser to get a fresh start every fifteen minutes.The movie is told in forward flashes of events that are to come that compensate for his unreliable memory during which he has liasons with various complex characters.The central plot circumscribes the idea that Leonard's sole aim of life is avenging his wife's death and the movie veers between these future occurances and a telephone conversation that he has in a motel room where he likens his condition to a client he claims had a similar condition to his.
The mysteries-
If you have watched the movie closely there are certain questions which might have arised in your mind, some of these were questions that came to my mind and i would like to provide my explainations to them.
Two most prominent questions were...did sammy jankins really exist?
Did Leonard kill his wife himself or was she murdered in the accident ?
What i could draw from the movie was that Lenny(Leonard) had a client named Sammy Jankins but he feigned the condition of short term memory loss. Leonard proved Sammy's lie and so Sammy was not granted any reimbursments, the twist arises in the fact that Sammy did not have a wife ( as stated by Teddy-his friend assuming Teddy is true) it was actually leonard's wife herself who had diabetes and she was raising those questions and she was the one who tried desperately to prove somehow that Leonard would snap out of the illness if she did the right thing. She went to extremes by testing it herself and infact it was not Sammy but Leonard who injected those insulin injections in his wife thus sending her in a state of comma. If you notice the scene where Sammy is shown in a hospital on the wheelchair, the last glimpse of that scene has Leonard on the same wheelchair in place of Sammy and if you hear the dialogues in his voiceover it will make sense that he himself was undergoing the condition which he claimed that Sammy had. Leonard's mind camouflaged his illness on Sammy's body because Sammy was a part of his memory and Lenny himself puts it as " Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.' So it proves that Lenny himself was the cause of his wife's death and it is supported in the last scene of the movie when he closes his eyes and visualises his wife, a tattoo is imprinted on his chest saying 'I have done it' as if his guilt was speaking as he did not have the tattoo earlier.
The last scene is clearly the defining scene of the movie when Lenny's character makes a strong decision- he realises he has killed his wife, he realises that he has already avenged her death but he still continues in his quest for a 'John g', because that is what his life has become all about- his life has no motto, no purpose no direction without a goal to achieve so he destroys evidence and sets up a new mystery to unfold and the movie is actually his quest to find out the latest 'john g' which ends up being his own friend 'Teddy - inspector John Gammel' beacause Lenny himself set him up by noting down his number plate as his last tattoo. It had become his obsession to solve self made mysteries as that was the only way he could believe that he was leading a normal life.
Speaking about car licence plates, the first scene has an 'I' in the number plate and lenny's tattoo has a '1' which is a blatant error rectified by the director when the number plate incorporating a '1' instead of the 'I' on the plate in the final scene.
The uniqueness-
The most enthralling part of the movie is that it forces the viewer to think, analyze and draw conclusions and then it provides chilling evidences to refute our assumptions in a bid to unfold the true story. As i mentioned earlier the brilliance of the movie lies in the way the story is narrated and the subtle hints interspaced between crude facts which when taken as a whole provides a lucid explaination of what the movie intends the target audience to conclude.
Ghajini-
Ghajini the movie having a starcast consisting of Mohit ahlawat, Asin, Aamir khan and Jiah khan and directed by A.R. Murugadoss has a rear accomplishment of keeping the name of the movie on a villian - a fact not experimented in Bollywood. I saw this movie because of the Aamir Khan- A.R.Rahman combination and the premovie frenzy generated by the media of this being loosely inspired by The Memento. This movie departs from the original based on its destinctive narrative in reverse chronology and is laid flat out to display the revenge of a battered hero seeking revenge for the murder of his soulmate (brilliatly portrayed by Asin and she was the flair and the essence the movie required). This is intertwined with glimpses of memory loss which is not expressed very explicitly but brilliantly emoted by Aamir through his acting skills which are undoubtably remarkable as always. He quite literally ratifies the famous proverb ' Actions speak louder than words'. Jiah Khan is the director's dummy who unfolds Aamir's mystery to draw out on the storyboard, the reason behind Aamir's actions. The first part of his life- his love story with Asin is a sweet romantic comedy and has certain glimpses which teleports you into a utopian world where life is a cake and love is the icing on top.Nevertheless its fun to watch and to add to it all A.R.Rahman's music provides the cherry on top. Although unconventional, his music is pleasing to the ears. At the end, the hero gets his revenge,the villian dies and it's a happy ending - a perfect Bollywood recipe.
The comparision-
The theme of my blog was to draw a comparision between these two movies.If you have seen the movies and read my blog completely then you would have realised that the movies are uncomparable. Except for the fact that the central characters have a short term memory loss there is nothing in common.
There are some very distinguishing facts between the two movies-
While Leonard remembered everything of his past life till the incident, Sanjay Singhania (Aamir) had to go over his notes everyday to recollect what he was and where he stands in his present life and what is his motto of life now.It was shown to that extent that he even forgot the daily activities of brushing his teeth or shaving his face.This leads me to think that how can it be a short term memory loss and how is he able to recollect everything just by reading his notes.
A simple comparision for computer literates would be that while Leonard's memory was more of a hard-disk with no capacity ( as he remembered everything prior to the incident and could not form new memories), Aamir's was more of a RAM -( highly volatile and had to be refreshed everytime he switched on his system)
Leonard was out for revenge but his character did not show the killer instinct to reach the murderer, it was more of a quest to solve a mystery and answer the puzzle of his life so that he would not live in guilt.
Sanjay Singhania metamorphosised into a killer with only one motto find the villian and kill him-that's the only way he could avenge her death and would get his peace of mind.
Leonard's life revolved in circles...everytime he committed a murder he relieved himself of the grief but during that time he started assembling new puzzles to solve so that he could re-embark on a journey which he had just completed. He conveniently wanted to live in his world of oblivion even though he had a chance of liberating his quest when he realized the truth from his friend Teddy.He rather found solace in living an artificial life.
Sanjay's life had a motto, once that was acheived he had come to terms with it and there were no more efforts for him to understand answers to questions which would have been posed to himself once his memory got refreshed.Lets assume that he made notes of avenging her murder and so he was haapy by dedicating the remainder of his life to children.
These contrasting styles throw light on some intiguing aspects at a global point of view-
-- Coming out of the theater i tried to answer the question raised by my mind that does Bollywood underestimate the the public of India or am i overestimating them as i found nothing new in the movie although people have given rave reviews of the movie. Clearly Ghajini's target audience was the rural India. It was not a cult film but a bollywood money churner.Ghajini as a movie is good, there are no shortcomings in the film independently, but it is nowhere close to the original and knoeing Aamir Khan and being his ardent fan i expected a lot more from it.
--Ghajini was not about short term meory loss, Murgadoss's depiction leaves this movie as the display of Aamir's overwhelming acting skills with nothing in it for the intelligentsia. It was not a movie for the classes but for the masses. A broken down simple linear story which people would understand and appreciate. It's nowhere close to an Oscar winner but will definately be a top five contender in the Best Actor award in the filmfare next year.
-- Hollywood approaches film making in a quite different manner as compared to Bollywood. The story telling, cinematography, plot and direction have high degree of contrasting styles. Take these two movies for an example it's more of a case of Brains v/s Brawns. On one hand where The Memento compels you to exercise your brain cells to understand the story Ghajini compels the central character to flex his muscles and the audience to leave thier brains aside sit back in their seats have pocorn and marvel in awe at the strength of a hero and his ever so predictable quest to overpower the villian...a perfect bollywood ending
