Guzaarish

Bhansali's painterliness wreaks havoc on the subject. The visual excesses distract from the basic emotions. You don’t feel for the central character

Namrata Joshi

Updated on: 7 February 2024 5:52 pm

Guzaarish

Starring: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai, Aditya Roy Kapoor
Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Rating: **

Let’s not debate whether Guzaarish’s tale of a quadriplegic, formerly a well-known magician (Hrithik), seeking mercy killing is inspired by Alejandro Amenabar’s The Sea Inside or not. As a standalone film, my problem with it springs from an apparent conflict of interest between its content and the treatment. On paper, it makes for a sensitive film about a man who has struggled hard to live. He now wants to claim the right to a dignified escape. Bhansali plays out this personal, intimate experience on a larger-than-life canvas with his characteristic flamboyance.

So, you have opulent sets and song-’n-dance pieces, a museum-like house for Hrithik, overly stylised costumes and make-up, like Aishwarya’s (Hrithik’s nurse) flouncy gowns and red-lipstick and Aditya Roy Kapoor (his under-study) in a bow and hat, wearing bermudas with a jacket. Blue colour permeates every frame. No wonder, even though Bhansali actually shot the film in Goa, it does not feel real, more a fantasy land. You wonder what Bhansali is trying to say with this overt method and design. He is certainly no Kieslowski whose defined use of colour palettes in the Three Colours trilogy had a definite idea and philosophy behind it. In Bhansali’s case, it feels more like an act of self-indulgence. Perhaps he must have had a childhood desire to be a painter.

But his painterliness wreaks havoc on the subject. The visual excesses distract from the basic emotions. You don’t feel for the central character, his suffering gets romanticised, robbing it of the essential poignancy and profundity it deserved. Unlike Khamoshi or Black, there are no moments that touch or move you. Emotions aside, the film is also unable to raise the contentious issue of euthanasia in an effective manner, the protracted legal scenes are more tiring than enlightening.

What makes the film watchable is Hrithik’s sincere, earnest performance. But the director reins him, doesn’t allow him to transcend his star charisma, physicality and beauty. He’s made to lie on the bed impeccably well-groomed. Aishwarya comes alive for a while in the Udi dance number but has a largely stylised presence that Hrithik describes in the film as marble outside and granite within.

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