Movie REview : Guru

As usual Mani Ratnam has taken up a controversial and interesting theme and as usual, he stops short on the depth. The sad thing though is that as Mani Ratnam's presentation gets slicker, his miniscule content tends to get rather lost.

The movie is about Gurukant Desai, failed student turned petrol worker for Shell in Istanbul turned mega industrialist. Combine this with the cotton trading on floor, spat with a Parsi blue-blood industrialist, friendship with a socialist newspaperman which later turns into a long running feud, the questionable ethics versus shareholder friendliness - the connection to Dhirubhai Ambani is rather pronounced but vehemently denied. Again signature Mani Ratnam - Iruvar, Nayagan style.

The story can be summed up in one line - it is a rags to riches story of a petrol attendant who becomes India's largest industrialist. Obviously Mani Ratnam went into the story attracted by the shades of grey of the character of the protagonist - a visionary, a person who fights all odds, who allows nothing to stall him - not relationships (like his brother-in-law Jignesh) nor setbacks nor criticism,who corrupts on the same mega scale as he creates. But as usual, Mani Ratnam does not delve the depths of this character. Abhishek ends up looking like a hero, despite all the greys and he is not the one to portray the different shades of the personality he plays.

The shades are brought out by several points in the movie -

1)Guru marries Sujatha for the dowry but is not bothered by the fact that she is older by a year, has tried to elope with someone else. They have a great relationship -Is it the dowry alone ? Then how does he manage a good relationship with her?

2) Jignesh, his brother-in-law, is an equal partner in his business but Guru is unquestionably the able one, the one who makes the decisions. When Jignesh questions it, Guru as well as his cronies are taken aback.

3) As Madhavan remarks - Guru has grown by 400% but the corruption he spreads has grown at twice the rate.

4) As Vidya Balan puts it - Whatever the route he is chosen he is successful and he has made a lot of ordinary people successful through the stockmarket.

But sadly the shades are only hinted at, the filmaker does not explore them at all. And hence while Guru becomes a watchable movie due to its lucid storytelling, good perfomances, good music and great locales, it can never be called a brilliant movie.

Abhishek has put in a good performance, but his is a one dimensional character - more the hero than a man, that sadly was the lack of vision on the part of the director.

Aishwarya is as usual the glamour element, but thankfully is less coy, cloying and irritating in this movie.

Madhavan and Mithun Chakraborty, the two newspapermen, idealistic but intensely human walk away with the best characters, followed by Vidya Balan who represents the balance in this all. These three characters prove to be so much more interesting than the main characters.In real life, Dhirubhai always maintained centre-stage but somehow, in the movie version that is not what Gurubhai does.