Saturday, November 18, 2006

How Fanaa is Like Mylo (Destroy Destroy Destroy Destroy)

I am probably the last desi on the planet to finally see Fanaa; I learnt these three things:

1) I have zero sense of romance. Aamir Khan plays a film-lyric-spouting tour guide with a scary case of Rushdie-eyebrow-itis who brushes up against *beautiful*, *blind* girl Kajol every chance he gets. I suspect that a suitable member of the audience would have had a severe case of the tinglies--I got the creepies, instead.

2) It seems that “Fanaa” means “destruction.” I didn’t know that when I unwrapped the DVD from its Netflix swaddling. Then the word was dropped in about 84 different contexts during the first half hour (almost as obsessively as Mylo) and I thoroughly understand it now. I promise. Please don’t immersion-method it again. /whimper/

3) I could have saved myself the trouble. When a movie has been described thusly, “I felt incredibly cheated immediately after seeing "Fanaa" …. as if Aamir Khan and Kajol had stolen my ATM card and pilfered $11.50 directly from my bank account”--it’s probably a good idea to give it a wide berth.

Although, I did respond appropriately and get a case of the giggles when I realized that they were going to go all Roop-tera-mastana and procreate after they inevitably got drenched in the rain--although I did wonder if rain in Indian movies is coy, semiotic shorthand for physical sexual response or ‘glide.

Ultimately, despite above snark and all the outlandish coincidences in Fanaa’s extreme national narrative, I couldn’t prevent myself from rooting for Aamir K to get innocent and the lovers to get back together--disgraceful, I know. My literature profs are howling, weeping blood and drafting e-mails designed to shame me; I’ll have to go and deal with that now.
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* Beautiful i.e. thoroughly gorgeous in that artless and unaffected Kajol way from ten years ago.
* Blind i.e visually sightless, and not just injudicious, although that applies too.




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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, you sort of could have saved yourself the trouble.... except don't forget that I also cursed the movie for sucking me in even though I didn't want it to. Remember your goading me on to trademark "so bad it's good"?? Don't forget that this was the source of it all.

I'm glad you saw it. The music would be hard to resist.

Anonymous said...

The clip looks very colorful, very good. Too bad you did not let yourself enjoy it. :(

a day to be proud...

1) of my WGS students who set up 25 wonderful interactive booths to discuss subjects as varied as the female gaze in films, non-binary erasu...