By Amrita Shah

In the space of a year we have had two films --Rang De Basanti and Guru -- which tread dangerously close to preaching anarchy

“No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin. Correct standards of life shall be presented on the screen, subject only to necessary dramatic contrasts. Law, natural or human, should not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy created for its violation.”

The above code was adopted by the Motion Picture Producers of America in March 1930.  And there will be need to recall it a few paragraphs later. But first, a synopsis of the film under review. Mani Ratnam, the management student turned director from Chennai, has a penchant for taking up contemporary issues and personalities in his films (Kashmir in Roja, mafia leader Vardharajan Mudaliar in Nayakan, sectarian violence in Bombay). But in Guru he has stretched himself far even by his own standards by taking on the life of a man who was -- and whose sons continue to be -- among the most powerful men in the country.

Gurukant Desai, widely acknowledged to be an approximate portrait of Dhirubhai Ambani, is a young man from a small village in Gujarat. Like most self-made entrepreneurs he has hopes beyond his circumstances and a will to do what it takes to realise them. In Guru’s case, this involves a stint as a petrol pump attendant in Turkey, marriage for dowry, a struggle against entrenched business lobbies and corrupt bureaucrats and personal tragedy. Guru battles the odds with a characteristic mixture of charm and brazenness that wins him the support of an idealistic newspaper baron. As Guru grows in success however, his manipulative behaviour and disregard for ethics infuriates his mentor and a bitter fight breaks out between the two. 

Ratnam is adept at simplifying the complex. The stifling business environment of the post-independence period and  the idea of journalistic licence, for instance, are put across without interrupting the pace or mood of the unfolding story. The ageing and growing prosperity of the Desais too is economically conveyed by just a few touches – a new car or hairstyle. Both Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, the former in particular, have allowed themselves to be deglamourised by ‘Mani Sir’ to an extent that is rare by the standards of mainstream cinema. Abhishek Bachchan turns out a good performance, managing to convey the character’s spirit of masti through various ages while Mithun Chakraborty as his determined opponent is excellent.

There is also however, a great deal of superfluity. The songs, but for the Mallika Sherawat item number, are tedious and unnecessary. There is also a whole emotional sub-plot involving Vidya Balan as the newspaper baron’s crippled granddaughter, that seems to have no purpose but to soften the bitterness between the two men and to demonstrate a sentimental side to Guru’s character which seems quite unbelievable given the repeated references made to his ruthlessness by other characters in the film. Madhavan’s character  is far too well-off and self-assured to be credible as a reporter writing damaging stories against a successful industrialist.

So Guru, like his previous films, walks the same thin line between the fantastic and the factual, between excessive sentiment and hard, at times violent, reality. And as before, the contradiction is not merely a matter of style but one of ethics as well. In a profile of the director in the features magazine Man’s World, the writer Anita Nair once claimed  that Mani Ratnam’s films had a ‘force field’ that dispelled once the film ended (‘nothing lingers’). One can perhaps attribute this to the uneasy and shifting ideological stance of the directorial voice.

In Guru the shift is so abrupt and so wide that it smacks you in the face, leaving you reeling and confused. The reversal takes place towards the end. Till that point the viewer is encouraged to empathise with both sides rather than judge, though with the mounting  campaign against Guru’s malpractices, the stress that severely affects his health and gives his best friend and colleague a near fatal heart attack, his downfall seems assured. But just then, at his lowest point, Guru stages a comeback. Not with a change of heart, or an answer to his critics on facts but with a speech that reduces the commission investigating his malpractices to a pack of ineffectual fools and that makes him a rebel and a man of the people in the Gandhian mould. The film ends with Guru promising in front of a cheering crowd in a football stadium to build the world’s largest company.

There is much falsehood in his claims. Gandhi’s struggle was against foreign rule and not for material gain. And India is not the size of a football stadium. Guru’s success may have made a number of people rich, as the film claims, but his motives and methods stem from an overpowering greed that is purely individualistic and blatantly flouts the law of the land. That this by itself is not shocking can be seen from the responses to the film in the blogosphere. “(The) depiction of a protagonist who is so full of self-interest is one of the foremost things I loved in the film” goes one comment. Another praises the ‘capitalist nature of the movie’. The fact that the film has fared well only in urban centres suggests that message has been perceived as exclusive rather than inclusive.

The message also raises the question of a filmmaker’s responsibility. In the space of about a year we have had two films which seem to tread dangerously close to preaching anarchy. In Rang De Basanti a group of kids murder a corrupt politician and take over a radio station. This could be said to contravene the code spelt out at the beginning of this review by creating sympathy for the violation of the law. On the other hand it could be argued that the moving impulse was a perceived larger good. Guru makes the same claim. But it is hard to believe him.

(Amrita Shah is a writer and columnist based in Mumbai)

InfoChange News & Features, February 2007