10 years of Guru

Aapne mujhe paanch minute diye the na? Saadhe chaar minute mein sab kuch khatam kar diya maine. Thees second profit …munaafa…yehi hota hai bijness!”

Gurukant Desai delivers this epic statement after a strong defence in front of a tribunal in Mani Ratnam’s legendary biopic (though he never officially agreed) on Dhirubhai Ambani.

These eight-odd minutes is probably the biggest stand that any of our makers would have made in favour of those, who venture out on their own to build better businesses and a better country. Abhishek Bachchan gives his heart and soul to this effort and this act of his remains one of the best attempts at larger than life characters in the decade of 2000.

‘Guru’ tracked the growth of Gurukant Desai from his young days. The biggest stand out point of his character was that despite faced by negativity and cynicism from his father in every important step that he takes; he maintains energy and a down to earth smile.

Gurukant Desai hides an intense gladiator inside him and it is revealed when a high flying arrogant businessman in Mumbai tries to buy him and his business out.

You then discover that Gurukant Desai does not stop till he achieves his own goals and when he reaches there he sets new goals for himself. In one swift move after other, he brings this rival’s business to its knees.

Gurukant Desai is also treated unfairly by the then license raj and red tapes of the system but by that point in the movie Mani Ratnam ensures that Gurukant wins the audiences and his every move is the audiences own fight against the system.

‘Guru’ is a compelling watch, because of the powerful content it offered. His tussle with the newspaper baron Manik Dasgupta played with such rich flair by Mithun that he almost overshadows Abhishek’s Guru, which is backed by the director from scene one.

The most notable scene in this tussle is when he calls Guru to his house and unleashes Shyam, played by Madhavan, on him. Guru walks out telling Shyam – “Gurubhai se ladna toh Gurubhai banke!”

‘Guru’ had so many of these one-liners that if you have a sharp ear then sometimes keeping track of the movie would become impossible. The one-liners could force you into thinking of your own life situations.

I come back to the characters of Guru, though. Guru’s screenplay had so many well-written and carefully selected characters that it probably qualifies also as the most well condensed on screen soap opera in a long time.

‘Guru’ had an array of characters, each of them memorable and not necessarily in the order of the screen time that the director gave them.

‘Guru’s negative father! His wife, played by Aishwarya (and in my book it is her best on-screen effort till date, no not even the recent released ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ comes anywhere near); Mithun as the man, who seeks to bring justice to Gurukant Desai; Dasgupta’s most dogged and fearless man in command Shyam; Gurukant’s jealous and complicated brother-in-law.

His loyal team members like Ghanshyam Bhai; His wife’s half-deaf but golden-hearted father and Justice Thapar, who heads the tribunal against Gurukant Desai, deliver a powerful performance. If I were to write on the chemistry between these characters and the chemistry they have with Guru, I will need three more pages.

Guru had a phenomenal background score. It’s a known fact that AR Rahman keeps his best work for Mani Ratnam but let’s just say that for ‘Guru’, Rahman was in some ferocious mood to prove a point.

The background score that plays each time Guru plans a move is master class -- especially in the climax speech is phenomenonal. It was like AR Rahman controlling goosebumps in the theatre in this one.

The song “Jaage hain der tak humein kuch der sone do” remains, in my opinion, AR Rahman’s biggest underrated work.

In the entire 70s, the filmmakers of the then Bollywood, who were driven by the higher goals of socialism had fairly or unfairly ridiculed the business class of India.

A Marwadi/Sindhi/White collar businessman was either a villain or was in a villain’s team. ‘Guru’ in that sense remains the best contrarian answer to that genre of cinema. It makes it an unmissable epic.

By: Rahul Deo Bharadwaj