Ghemento?

Much has been said about just how much "inspired" Aamir Khan's latest movie Ghajini is from the Hollywood path-breaker Memento. In anticipation of Ghajini, I watched Memento to refresh my mind a few weeks before Ghajini was released.

I have always thought Bollywood needed more "psychopathic" characters--the type that would give our best actors a chance to really show off their histrionics. I was mesmerized by Shah Rukh Khan's role in Darr which I think is one of his best performances. So Aamir Khan playing a character with psychopathic tendencies intrigued me. Needless to say, irrespective of the controversies surrounding Ghajini's story and screenplay, Aamir Khan's acting in this movie, especially his menacing expressions in occasional scenes, was an absolute treat to watch.

So here is my personal take on Ghajini and its similarities to Memento. Let me begin with what I think are the similarities between the two movies:

1. Perhaps the greatest similarity is the protagonist's anterograde amnesia--the "ability" to retain only 15 minutes of memory. While Guy Pearce in Memento still had vivid intact memories of incidents before the accident, no such luck for Aamir Khan. However this aspect which is the crux of both movies, is too similar to ignore.

2. The overall plot of the protagonist avenging his better half's death. Both characters are revengeful and quite blood-thirsty. Memento showed the latter a bit subtly, while Ghajini was more in-your-face. However again a similarity too big to ignore, irrespective of what the director and Aamir Khan himself claim.

Thus with the main character and his purpose in the movie, the source of Ghajini truly seems to be Memento. A few other similarities:

3. Written memories in terms of tattooing and taking polaroid photographs: In Ghajini's defence, the minor difference is that Aamir Khan takes two copies of most photographs and gives a copy to the subject of the photograph. This subtle difference is quite significant in Ghajini's story.

Using polaroid photographs in Ghajini has been severely criticized by some as a mindless rip-off. My rebuttal is that there is no better alternative! If Sanjay Singhania carried a digital camera (which is much more prevalent today than a polaroid camera), how would he take notes? He could leave himself audio-clips I suppose. But then how would he give a copy to another person (with the audio-clip so that they could use it as a photo ID when they met him)?

4. An attack of amnesia in the middle of a chase sequence (Ghajini climax and Memento somewhere in the middle)

Now for where I think the movies stand apart:

1. The biggest difference between the two movies (and I didn't catch this immediately) is that the themes are totally different. While Ghajini is a story of out-and-out revenge, Memento is actually about deceit and not revenge. Although Guy Pearce thinks throughout the movie that he is taking revenge for his wife's rape and murder, the whole movie is about how multiple characters deceive him for their own benefit. For example the cop who uses him to finish off criminals, the female character who uses him to get rid of her abusive boyfriend, etc.

2. Contending with the above point to be the biggest difference, is the fact that in Memento, the protagonist in fact has inadvertently killed his wife! (I can't believe all the critics of Ghajini did not acknowledge this!) Guy Pearce aids his wife's suicide without realizing it, and remembers it as the life-story of a fictitious client (he's an insurance agent). This is a shocking revelation in Memento and not merely an insignificant detail.

While these two points are not immediately obvious in the similar-looking screenplay, they are too big to go unnoticed. A few other differences:

4. The very obvious difference in screenplay. Memento unfolds backwards in 10-minute increments which is acknowledged to be the most groundbreaking part of that movie. Ghajini on the other hand, proceeds chronologically for the most part, although the flashback and current proceedings are nicely mixed.

My take on this aspect is that Memento's screenplay is so brilliant that copying it in an Indian adaptation would undoubtedly fail. Although intelligent movie-goers who have seen Memento lament at the dumbed-down Ghajini, the overall audience of Hindi movies is vastly different from Hollywood's counterpart. Therefore I vote this change, although a big step down cinematographically, as necessary to make Ghajini work.

5. Memento does not stop after Guy Pearce kills who he wants to. In fact that fact is but an insignificant detail in Memento (which is a bit moot since who he kills is his wife's rapist and not killer). The movie proceeds with its convoluted plot (very good, mind you). This strengthens my claim that Memento is not about revenge, but about deceit. Ghajini does not explore the implications of anterograde amnesia nearly as well as Memento did.

6. Like it or not, the very brief subplot of erasing all of Aamir Khan's tattoos was a very shrewd diversion from the original movie. Again made possible because Ghajini is actively pursuing Sanjay Sanghania, whereas nobody is doing so in an obvious way in Memento.

7. The love story angle: I was frankly a bit bored of this part of Ghajini because it was too long, had too many songs and took my attention away from what I thought was by far the more intriguing part of the movie--Aamir's psychopathic transformation. However I have to concede that the love story made the story and movie complete. I would claim the love story is the most significant component in the "Indianization" of Memento. I would honestly wish away the songs though...

8. The end: I wish Ghajini did not end so pathetically. Again an example of desperately trying to end a movie on a positive note. Ghajini is a thoroughly sad movie, and its this sadness that makes the movie so emphatic. A happy end of any sort just wastes the aura that the director and the actor tried so hard to establish.


The verdict: I view Murugadoss's claim that he did not see Memento before penning Ghajini as dubious. However I give him credit for creating obvious differences between Memento and Ghajini, using anterograde amnesia shrewdly in parts and successfully Indianizing the story. Thus Ghajini still qualifies as an "inspiration" rather than a rip-off, but it occasionally flirts with the boundary.