Fanaa

A film built on a whole lot of improbabilities and soulless performances around a conveniently contrived and predictable plot

Yash uncle has been hard selling Fanaa as a film about the coming together of two acting titans of contemporary Hindi cinema – Kajol and Aamir Khan. We are invited to appreciate their prowess and get overwhelmed by it. What we get exposed to is just the opposite. It is their flawed performances that pull the film down to the depths of mediocrity. But why blame them for it? Normally, poor actors cannot see the wrongs and rights of their work. It is the director who rights the wrongs, and wrongs the rights.

However, Fanaa is an Aamir Khan film, who makes the cameras roll till he gets it right. He is also the Messiah of the displaced and the poor and a zealous celluloid revolutionary. More than an actor, he is a maestro, a genius, a miracle, and an omnipotent and omniscient One. Can you blame an ordinary mortal like a film’s director if God Himself fails him?

A blind Kashmiri girl called Zoonie, ever on the look out for a shaayar prince as her hubby, comes to Delhi to sing deshbhakti songs at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and instantly clings on to a sadak chaap shaayer and guide, a smart talker, and a funny fellow called Rehan. He screws her to give her the time of her life. Later, he decides to marry her, gets her blindness treated, and presumably dies in a bomb blast in Delhi even before Zoonie could see her benefactor and lover with her newfound vision. He is not dead actually. It is he who had plotted the blast and had left behind a few mementos with an unrecognisably burnt body. He is a global terrorist who fights for an independent Kashmir, and walks around international airports in a black suit in the mould of James Bond 007, the one who never  dies. Seven years later, on a terrorist mission in Poland, oops, Kashmir, he accidentally meets Zoonie while running away from Indian Security forces like Rambo I and II and III with a ‘trigger’ of a nuclear device that must reach his ‘Nana’ so that he could blow Indian cities off the map of the world. The girl has a son now and they live with her father in a remote snow-bound bungalow. This seven-year-old cute product of a few days of touristy courting and one night of insipid and thanda screwing, is also called Rehan. He is full of cute dialogues such as ‘Aap Rehan ko utna pyaaar nahin karatin, jitna Reahan aap ko karta hai’. Rehan Junior rekindles familial emotions in the killing machine. After a few scenes, Zoonie also discovers that the man in the Indian army fatigues is actually Rehan, her son’s father. Family reunion does not last long as Zoonie’s father, an avid NDTV watcher, finds out that Rehan is the big time terrorist Indian police has been fervently and feverishly looking for. Rehan accidentally kills his sasur. In the end Zoonie kills Rehan as he insists on finishing his Nana’s mission. He repeats the pet dialogue of the Junior R in his dying moments as Zoonie begins her customary wailings. This is all of Fanaa.

 It’s a linear story, with a beginning, middle, and end, which is backed by the presence of big time stars, top-notch technicians, the marketing muscle, and the money power of a Maha Maha big banner like Yashraj.

Yet the film does not turn on the audiences.

So, what is wrong with the film?

It’s the performances that never take off beyond some funny and road chaap shaayari. The characters have not been given enough space and time to acquire flesh, blood, heart, and soul thanks to a contrived screenplay, replete with implausible and improbable scenarios. Ipso facto, the actors go through the motions with weak motives. They mouth jokes, Urdu couplets, and punch lines and do the usual ‘expressionbaazi’ but fail to romance and mate with their characters.

Aur film uthne ke pahale hi baith jaati hai.

Our filmmakers, writers, and actors are generally found wanting when they deal with a subject like Fanaa that demands keener application of intellect and emotions to make it work well. But there is a positive to this negative scenario. It exposes the fault lines under the hidden surfaces and we know kaun kitne paani mein hai.

We certainly know now that the most talented and erudite Aamir Khan is an actor with a very limited capacity to gauge and essay the contours and nuances of a character. Whatever he has done in his earlier films, he repeats those themes in Fanaa as well. If his character demanded anything subtle and sublime, it remains unappreciated, unwritten, and undelivered. How do you blame Kunal Kohli here when Aaamir is known to take charge of the script right from the beginning of his film projects?
 

So, what is Aamir’s real contribution to this film? His star value and nothing else. Is he maturing and growing as an actor? No. Is he maturing and growing as a social activist? No. His social activism is as flippant as his characters in sundry films from Rangeela to Fanaa. He is getting typecast now. His interviews and TV appearances give us a feeling that he thinks he knows everything. It is a typical sense of grandeur our actors develop before they fade out and die. Fanaa is yet another nail in the coffin of Aaamir Khan, the actor, notwithstanding the business worth millions and billions it does at the BO.

What about Kajol’s work in Fanna? She is used as an appendage to prop up the character of a vainglorious Khan. Had the focus been on Zoonie, the film may have won the hearts of the audience. But you cannot do this in an Aamir Khan film, the all-knowing actor and star, and the self-proclaimed conscience of the nation.

RKS