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.

Kunal Kohli wants to project Aamir Khan as a superhero but lacks the imagination to do so, regardless of an attempt to invest the penultimate sequence with moral grandeur.

The narrative structure is faulty, to say the least. The element of terror comes into focus only at the end of the first half. Till then it is a tale of a charming rake and a trusting, beautiful, silly, visually challenged girl. In the second half – from the point the nuclear trigger is stolen to when Rehan makes it accidentally to Zoonie’s lonely snow-bound cottage in Kashmir (actually it is Poland) – the story is told in separate chunks. There is no way to sustain the suspense of the three parallel elements namely, the Indian intelligence looking for Rehan, his grandfather trying to get in touch with him presumably over satellite telephone and Rehan’s recovery in the bosom of his just rediscovered family. There is no doctor in sight, his father-in-law bandages him as best as he can and puts him to sleep. His wife still thinks he is a seriously wounded Indian Army major who bears an uncanny resemblance to her lost love.

Loud music is expected to help in the suspension of disbelief. But nothing, absolutely nothing of the sort happens. The actors try to wring out tears from stones, the elements look dark and brooding, some people get killed, but the story moves forward at a snail’s pace. The climax comes as an anti-climax.

What exactly is the film trying to say is anyone’s guess. Is it that love conquers all, especially when fuelled by separatist movements spearheaded by terrorists? Or that sexual congress is the only thing worth pursuing and all else is a nuisance? Only Kunal Kohli can answer.

Fanaa is a huge hit thanks to the intervention of Narendra Modi who wanted the film banned in Gujarat because Aamir had dared to support the displaced persons of the Narmada dam project who had not yet been compensated by the state government. The nation, if not as a whole but certainly its northern part, rallied around the beleaguered star and his film. A bad, even non-artistic production suddenly found favour with a large paying public.