Sacrificing belief

Lacking plot, characterisation, finesse and credibility, Fanaa was a hit because of its ban 

Partha Chatterjee Delhi

Yash Raj Films’s Fanaa directed by Kunal Kohli, in accordance with its name, demands the ultimate sacrifice of the viewer — namely the negation of all good sense. It is supposed to be Kajol’s comeback film, so it is, in a way; people are going in droves to see her and Aamir Khan play out a story which is expensively mounted but an insult to an ordinary person’s intelligence.

The plot, if it can at all be called that, revolves around a Kashmiri terrorist, Rehan, masquerading as a tourist guide in Delhi and Zoonie Ali Baig, a blind student, who comes from Srinagar as part of an all-girls troupe to perform in Rashtrapati Bhawan during the Republic Day celebrations. Their love – his part in it is four-fifths lust and one-fifth confusion and compassion – forms the nucleus of the narrative.

His disappearance and sudden reappearance for entirely “professional” reasons – he is busy wrecking havoc all over the world at the behest of a grandfather who wants an independent Kashmir free from Indo-Pak interference – provides the ballast.  But the director’s conception of cinema is comic book, in a pejorative sense. There is no real skill in the telling, only a desperate scampering from one hysterical moment to another.

The first high in the script comes when Rehan jumps off the roof of the bus that is to take the visiting students sightseeing and begins to spout doggerel verse in Urdu at Zoonie. One is pained in the brow and remembers, in contrast to this, a moment from Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa (1957) when Vijay, the poet,s tries to impress his ladylove Meena by quoting from Jalil Manikpuri, Jab mein chalun toh saaya bhi apna na saath deye / jab tum chalo, zameen chale, asman chale. The suspicion that Hindi cinema is under the sway of failed plumbers begins to take hold soon after Rehan in a most tactless insensitive moment calls Zoonie andhi or blind when she bumps into him.

Should anyone protest the script hacks will tell us that all this is part of character delineation because he is a terrorist although we the audience do not know it as yet. But soon enough he begins to behave like a caring lover, so much so that he even enchants Zoonie’s sahelis and the lady in charge of the troupe, not to speak of a police inspector who is part of the security arrangements at the President’s estate.

Ostensibly to stay in character he reminds Zoonie from time to time that women for him are like cities to be visited once and then forgotten. That, however, does not stop him from getting Zoonie to undergo a successful eye operation. Zoonie’s conservative parents for reasons best known to them let her stay on in Delhi when they learn on the phone that she has found her dream man. Her mother thus advises “sacrifice your pride only for him who is willing to stake his life in his love for you”.

Aamir Khan is after all the leading man and, therefore, if he plays a lawbreaker, it has to be one with ideals. Of course his beliefs are conditioned by his fur-capped grandfather who mouths clichés from Pakistan-managed Kashmir. Kajol, the romantic lead, is all a woman should be — strong, patient, loving, faithful and of unswerving integrity. But then love must triumph posthumously over complicated international politics. 

Fanaa, for all the digital technology available to enhance its looks, is actually badly shot. Its aesthetics of course is derived from current advertising photography. Generous use of special effects, despite the obvious competence of the Polish crew who also did the helicopter shots, cannot help lift the film.