REVIEW: Guzaarish (2)

WAY TO GO

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s films exist in their own aesthetic space, independent of constraints of time or location.  In his latest Guzaarish too, he creates a an overblown world,  interiors suffocatingly overcrowded with objects d’art and set pieces with mood lighting. The characters are Indian, but dress in an odd fusion that could place them in Europe or Latin America.  Not a world as ‘manufactured’ as Saawariya, but almost there.

The plot about a quadriplegic’s fight for the right to die has been borrowed from The Sea Inside. Ethan Mascarenhas (Hrithik Roshan) used to be a magician, when an onstage accident left him paralysed neck downwards. For 12 years, he has been trapped in his huge, isolated mansion, dependent on a stoic nurse Sofia (Aishwarya Rai), who dresses in extravagant, twirling gowns and red lipstick, does her work with brisk efficiency and leaves to go back to her mysterious life. For all those years, he has been living with hope and humour, running a radio show that gives other people hope.

But when his condition deteriorates, he summons his lawyer friend Devyani (Shernaz Patel) and asks her to file a petition for the right to die. His decision triggers off a flurry of moral righteousness and protest, with only the people who love him the most, being able to understand his need to die with dignity.

Into this bitterness steps an enthusiastic young magician (Aditya Roy Kapoor), eager to learn from the master, and helps Sofia in her tireless care, but without her attentiveness, and unspoken love -- in a way, representative of the ‘outside’ world.

Bhansali’s touch is lighter than his melodramatic and Gothic, Black, and Hrithik Roshan’s brave performance gives it a grounding, or Bhansali flights of fancy can be intolerably excessive.

Of  course, the film tries to draw the viewer into the debate, to take sides, to get indignant if need be,  but also remain detached at another level, since there is very little ugliness and pain -- what exactly Sofia must go through just hinted at verbally. Of course, Sofia is an ideal male fantasy women, improbably beautiful and unquestioningly devoted. When a film’s milieu forces a disconnect, one wonders how the story would go if the character was poor man (or woman) who couldn’t afford care. Ultimately if a film has to reach the core of a viewer’s compassion,  universality  must be a possibility.

As it is now, Guzaarish is a very handsomely mounted, well acted, but not particularly earth-shattering film, given the enormity of the debate at its core.

Comments

[Rajeev B. Agarwal]

Everyone is referring to 'The Sea Inside' in the context of 'Guzaarish'. How come nobody is talking about John Badham's 'Whose Life Is it Anyway?' (1981) starring Richard Dreyfuss?