Simply Perfect

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

"Fanaa" is an incredibly frustrating film to watch. The first half is magnificent--very romantic and very enjoyable. The second half, though not bad, was so incredibly different in tempo and style that it really did not fit together with the first half. In fact, I almost wish the movie had just ended in the middle!When the story begins, Zooni (Kajol) is going on a trip to Delhi with some friends. Her parents are worried...after all, she is blind. But they also know they need to let her grow and experience the world, so they reluctantly send her. Soon after arriving, the group of young ladies are met by their tour guide--a vivacious man named Rehan (Aamir Khan). He is clearly a ladies man and the women can't help but like him. Most taken by him is Zooni. Now you aren't sure about Rehan. Is he sincere or is she just another conquest for this playboy?Soon you have your answer. Despite telling her he's no good, Rehan professes his love and the pair plan on getting married. However, when her parent arrive in Delhi for the wedding, Rehan is not there....and they soon receive word that he was killed in a Kashimiri Separatist bombing.Believe it or not, there is MUCH more of the movie to follow. Oddly, however, while the first portion was all romance, the second half is more like some sort of James Bond film!!! To me, this didn't work well--especially because this super-agent practically has X-Men powers!!! No one is THIS tough nor this bullet-proof! What exactly am I talking about? Well, I really cannot say...it would spoil the film. Suffice to say, I adored the first half and would score it a 9. The second half, at best 5. And overall, still a 5 just because parts one and two simply don't work as a whole.

'Fanaa' may be the kind of film that looks good in paper but the execution to screen is just plain awful. Kunal Kohli 's movie looks like a parody of Mani Ratnam's classic 'Dil se'. Of course Kohli loads 'Fanaa' with too much 'masala' (spice) and sugar. For the most part the film is unintentionally funny with it's overdone action sequences, very badly written dialogues, syrupy romantic scenes, annoying background music, poor special effects and what not. After every few seconds, someone would be screaming 'Ya Maulaaaaa' in the background. The songs are pleasant to the ears but, with the exception of 'Mere Haath Mein' and maybe 'Des Rangeela', they are forgettable. I don't see what's so great about the overrated 'Chand Sifarish' which is constructed of horrendous lyrics albeit the tune is hummable. There are so many things in this movie for which Kohli cannot be easily forgiven but why on earth did an actress of Tabu's calibre agree to play such a terrible role instead of throwing the script at the director's face? This is among her worst career-choices. Aamir Khan is hilariously bad. His caricature terrorist does provide some unintentional laugh out loud moments especially in sequences where he's dramatic. Rishi Kapoor is equally ridiculous and annoying too. There is this child actor who makes you cringe so bad that you feel like strangling him or wishing that he had been thrown off the cliff along with Rishi Kapoor. The best thing about 'Fanaa' is Kajol who is the only person that acts plays her part with gusto and grace and the result is a fine performance. But how much can just one great performance can do for what is an overall horrendous boring film.

Fanaa had a lot of marketing hype - the reclusive Aamir paired with Kaajol on a comeback. Music which was blared repeatedly out of various channels and the neighborhood paanwala and your obnoxious auto driver and the yuppies whose car would blare out 'subahnalla' which is the defining song in the movie. The terrorist who falls in love or the love story of a terrorist had good potential - instead it becomes just another Hollywood pot boiler whose basic idea - a Lone Wolf Killer-cum-terrorist on the prowl who falls in love - is A DIRECT COPY OF 'THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE'. In fact Rishi Kapoor's death scene and the subsequent scene are shot by shot copies.Picture this : Kajol has just seen the dead body of her father and rushes to Aamir who blithely lies that her father is drinking with his buddy Satish Shah. This is a direct copy of Donald Sutherland's Needle telling Kate Nelligan's Lucy that her husband David (Christopher Cazenove) is drunk - just when Lucy has picked out David's dead body. This seems to be too obviously the long arm of co-incidence. Sharad Saxena and Tabu are a combined duo equivalent of Ian Bannen's Colonel Godliman who are chasing Rehan/ The Needle.So whats good? Obviously the superb performances by Aamir Khan and Kajol as star crossed lovers caught in events not of their making. Rishi Kapoor is also superb as Kajol's father - here is an actor whose subtle performance was not drawn out in his heydays as he was usually typecast as the guitar toting singing teenager. These three performances redeem the otherwise dismal movie which would have sunk without a trace . Not to speak of needless controversies promoted by the fascist Right Wing against the movie in Gujarat.

This is the kind of film with both enchants and annoys you. it is charming for the photography, for the poetic dialogs in the first part, for acting (it was nice seeing again Kajol), for the music (the songs where fine, even though they were sometimes spoiled by some cheap arrangement). It annoys you because of some avoidable discrepancies: first of all, if a blind person regains sight, it is unlikely that s/he will recognize shapes and people instantly. On the contrary, it can even be that this person won't be able to see as normal people at all (there is an insightful essay by Oliver Sacks on this matter). This sensorial nonsense is repeated when Zooni (Kajol) and Rehan (Khan) meet again: seven years have passed, she still lives in the middle of nowhere, but hasn't forget her first love yet; he's wounded and knocks at her door, she can see but has never seen him. Nevertheless I had expected that she would have recognized him from his voice, but this didn't happen. The director set up a series of misunderstandings full of suspense and very enjoyable indeed: since their child (a child conceived during their only night together: I know people that would make a vote for such a fertility) is also called Rehan, she keeps shouting his name, making us believe that she's finally recognized her beloved. but this won't happen until he says something that he has already said in the past. Then the element that makes the recognition possible is in words more that in how they are said. I noticed elsewhere in Indian films this tendency to privilege words. I have also noticed the belief that knowledge is not possible out of seeing (two instances: Bairaag and Amar Akbar Anthony). Still we all know that voices can easily identify people, even many years later, and this would be even truer for someone who was blind. Besides, another thing that I find hard to believe is Zooni's unconditioned happiness when Rehan decides that she has to undergo an operation; in fact I read it as a sign of his not acceptance of her being the way she is. But discrepancies are so many that it is no use counting them. For instance, all the plot revolves around a trigger, and we are supposed to believe that someone is able to build an atom bomb capable of destroying a town, but not its trigger – the trigger is the size of a handy, was it not enough. And if you took for granted that Rehan takes some attentions in hiding it, you would be quite disappointed seeing it ticking off its jacket. But we know that the value of Bollywood films lays less in its realism than in other aspects. Only, I would expect at least some kind of emotional consequentiality, but even here I am often disappointed. During the entire second half, I am constantly upset by Zooni's impotence to understand what kind of man she is in love with. It is as if this love would cancel everything else. It is no longer a matter of choosing between two different evils (this seems to be the moral of the film), as far as love hides every other aspect of reality. For instance, Rehan kills Zooni's father, but this doesn't cause a big reaction in her, and for the umpteenth time she still shows her unimpeachable love. On the other hand, Rehan fights for a cause (right? wrong? is this terrorism or fight for independence? The point is quite ambiguous: in fact we see Rehan killing soldiers and not civilians, like if the director didn't want to compromise certain portions of the market; on the other hand, we see soldiers as human beings, therefore it is not easy to understand what the director thinks - I can see on the forum that this ambiguity gives space for quite different kinds of readings). I find annoying that love is confined to the couple, and that fight is assumed to detach people from every kind of emotional bond as well as rational attitude: the soldier Rehan simply obeys orders, he has to accomplish his mission and never asks himself if what he is doing is right; on the other hand, also Zooni, blinded by her love, doesn't care about what Rehan does out of their relationship. She doesn't care whether he has killed ten soldiers or not, as long as he decides to stay by her side. But, I ask myself, what kind of love is this, which doesn't have any regard for the world outside the couple? An unconditioned love without values? Maybe love, with its tendency to isolate couples, is not one of the pillars of society, but at least it could be less destructive when considering also the rights (not just civil, also emotional) of other people. What more can I say, this film stimulated me a lot of thoughts, therefore it was worth seen. As I said, it was annoying, but this annoyance lead to a lot of thinking. Better than just another boring film.