Word: ratnam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Guru's hero, played by Abhishek, is named Gurukant Desai, and Ratnam has insisted that any similarities are coincidental: "The film is purely fictional and could be based on anyone's life." Sure, and Citizen Kane wasn't inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst. Guru's plot frequently references Dhirubhai's life story. And unlike Kane, this movie dispenses with the muckraking for hagiography. The Ambani estate is protective of its founder's legacy, but at least two members of the family gave their blessing to Guru's stars: Dhirubahi's son Anil Ambani, chairman of Reliance Capital...
...Since I had put Ratnam's Nayakan on the all-TIME 100 Movies list, and cited the Rahman score for Ratnam's Roja as one of my five favorite soundtracks, it seemed a small favor in return to take a 10min. subway ride to see their new film. It was worth the trip - mine, if not theirs...
...hermetically sealed fantasy world that most Indian films inhabit, Ratnam's movies often flirt with incendiary political issues: a terrorist kidnapping in Roja; the 1992-93 Hindi-Muslim riots in Bombay; the rivalry of Tamil actor-statesman M.G. Ramachandran (known as MGR) and screenwriter-statesman M. Karunanidhi (MK) in Iruvar; more terrorism in Del Se; the Sri Lankan war in Kannathil Muthamittal. He is also fascinated with powerful figures in the Mumbai Mafia. Nayakan attached the structure of The Godfather to the career of gang lord Varadarajan Mudaliar, and Ratnam revisited the underworld in Agni Nakshatram and Thalapathi...
...2hr.46min. film Ratnam lays out the story with cool assurance, making room for five Rahman songs, all worth further hearings. (I can't stop humming the wedding song, and don't want to.) Dance numbers aren't crucial to a Ratnam movie, but there are a few here anyway. Ash's big number is a compendium of Bollywood visual tropes (no, let's be honest and say cliches): she dances in the rain, through a temple, by a waterfall, moving with more energy than rhythm and getting whiplashed by her pigtail. Much more satisfying is an early turn...
...then Gurukant is a simpler character than your average Corleone. The old Ratnam movies found ambiguous shades among the shadows of those gangsters and politicians. Gurukant is a hero of the people, a striver from the unprivileged classes, and gets automatic points for his vaulting ambition ("That's my problem, I can't hear the word 'no'"), for wanting to show the old-money crowd how new big money can be made. "Why should I work for that white man?" he says in Turkey. "I'll work for myself." It doesn't matter that he lacks the leisure skills...