Ghajini

Plot

Sunita, a medical student, is investigating the anterograde amnesia case of Sanjay Singhania, the chairman of Air Voice, an infamous telecommunications company. Sunita does her investigation against her professor's wishes as Sanjay is under criminal investigation. Sanjay, who loses his memory every 15 minutes, uses a system of photographs, notes, and tattoos on his body to recover his memory and remember his mission of avenging the murder of his fiancée Kalpana Shetty, who was killed by Ghajini Dharmatma, a kingpin and a notable socialite in Mumbai.

Inspector Arjun Yadav investigates a recent murder committed by Sanjay of one of Ghajini's men at his house. He tracks Sanjay to his apartment and knocks him unconscious. While searching his apartment, he finds a diary in his drawer and begins to read it. Arjun learns that Sanjay, a successful entrepreneur and second generation businessman, met Kalpana, a struggling model after planning to install an advertising billboard for his company above her apartment. When his agents approach Kalpana about it, her boss misinterprets it as a romantic advance and encourages her to accept it. Kalpana decides to pose as Sanjay's girlfriend, after seeing that the false story elevates her influence at work. After learning about the rumor from local tabloids, Sanjay angrily plans to confront Kalpana. On the drive to her workplace, Sanjay witnesses a young woman help a bunch of disabled school girls cross a ditch to enter a museum, and he is deeply moved by her kindness. When he finally arrives at the ad company, he discovers that this kind-hearted woman is Kalpana. Her cheerful personality and humor capture his attention, and he decides to keep his identity a secret. Posing as a struggling model named Sachin Chauhan, he spends time with Kalpana as an ordinary man, and the two fall deeply in love. The diary ends with Sanjay proposing to Kalpana on New Year's Eve, with him deciding to reveal his true identity if she accepts, but to walk away as Sachin if she doesn't.

In the present, Arjun tries to interrogate an unconscious Sanjay about the events after the first diary to no avail. After searching his drawers again, he finds a second diary. As soon as he starts reading it, Sanjay suddenly regains consciousness, breaks free of his holds in a fit of rage and viciously attacks Arjun, tying him up and locking him in a cupboard. He later tracks down Ghajini to Sunita's college function where Ghajini is the guest of honor as the CEO of GD Pharmaceuticals, a major donor of the college. Sanjay takes pictures of Ghajini as part of his plan to kill him. In a fit of memory loss, Sanjay mistakenly kills one of Ghajini's goons, and flees the scene when he realizes that he killed the wrong man. Ghajini is perplexed and fails to understand why this mysterious killer is targeting him. He decides to find and kill his enemies from two years ago one by one, but Sanjay is not among them.

Production

Development

Post the massive success of Ghajini, Murugadoss expressed interest in remaking the film with Salman Khan, but Pradeep Rawat felt like Aamir Khan might gel with Murugadoss better.

It was rumoured earlier that the film was titled Kajri. It is a remake of the Tamil film, Ghajini (2005). Aamir Khan, who had never before worked in a remake film in his career, was initially hesitant to do the film, but was convinced by Suriya, the original star of the Tamil Ghajini, who told him he was "the only one who could do justice to the character." Suriya was a fan of Khan, and had some involvement in the film's development, discussing minute details with Khan for two years during the film's development.

Casting

Priyanka Chopra was offered the role of Kalpana, but was later replaced by Asin, who reprised her role from the original Tamil film.

Khan was involved in the film's creative writing process, deciding what should remain from the original Tamil Ghajini and what changes should be made. Murugadoss revealed that the altered climax of the film was rewritten by Khan. According to Murugadoss:

We didn't make too many changes in the rest of the film. Every time I'd suggest a change in Ghajini from the original, Aamir would firmly cut it down, saying we should stick to the Tamil script. But he decided we should rewrite the climax. The entire location, incidents and dialogues for the climax were re-written by Aamir. I think the Hindi version is far better than the Tamil Ghajini because of the changes Aamir made.

Influences

Murdagoss's original 2005 Tamil version of Ghajini was inspired by the American film Memento (2000), which itself was adapted from the short story "Memento Mori". The film stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator searching for the man he believes raped and killed his wife during a burglary. Leonard suffers from anterograde amnesia, which he contracted from severe head trauma during the attack on his wife. Certain concepts like writing notes behind instant Polaroid photographs and tattooing facts on his body are also similar. According to Khan, "Ghajini is not a remake or even slightly inspired by Memento, but rather a remake of the Tamil film, Ghajini". However, he acknowledged that Murgadoss's original Tamil film was at least partly inspired by Memento, stating, "Murgadoss had heard about a film called Memento and the concept had really fascinated him. Without having seen the film he went ahead and wrote his own version of the script and screenplay. Having finished his script, he then saw Memento, found it very different from what he had written, and went ahead and made Ghajini."

The CGI opening brain sequence was inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club by David Fincher. This sequence was also used in the Tamil version of the film.

The film's title is a reference to Mahmud of Ghazni, the tenth-century Sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire whose name is pronounced "Ghajini" in Tamil. Several comical scenes in the film are similar to Happy Go Lovely (1951).

Filming

Shooting started in Chennai in May 2007. Climax was shot in Old City, Hyderabad. Other filming locations included Bangalore, Cape Town in South Africa, the Deadpan Desert in Namibia and Mumbai. Aamir Khan had spent a year working out at the gym, training for his role. This film marked the Bollywood debut for Asin. The film's production budget was ₹65 crore (US$14.94 million).

Release

Ghajini was released on 25 December 2008 with an estimated 1,500 prints worldwide, including 1,200 prints (digital and analogue versions) in the domestic market, making it the largest Bollywood release at that time. The domestic rights were sold to Geetha Arts for ₹530 million, while satellite, overseas and home media rights were sold at a total of ₹400 million, breaking the records of Shah Rukh Khan's film Om Shanti Om's ₹730 million.

The overseas distributors, Reliance Entertainment released the film with 300 prints in 22 countries, including 112 prints in the US and Canada, 65 prints in the UK and 36 prints in the UAE. Ghajini was also released in Norway, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. It had around 650 paid previews which fetched it around ₹70 million.

Home media

The two-disc collector's edition DVD was manufactured by Big Home Video and distributed by international distributor, Adlabs Films Ltd. (now Reliance MediaWorks) on 13 March 2009.

Video games

A PC video game based on the film was manufactured and produced by FXLabs Studios Pvt Ltd and Geetha Arts, and marketed and distributed by Eros Home Entertainment: Ghajini – The Game. It is a third-person action game consisting of five levels of play; here the player controlled the protagonist Sanjay to accomplish missions using martial arts, weapons, and artefacts. It was hailed as India's first true 3D PC game with an MSRP of US$14.99. Although never officially rated, the distributor recommends that 15+ year old players partake in the game.

Mobile video games were also released by Indiagames based on the film including Ghajini The Game and Ghajini Ultimate Workout.

Controversy

Director A. R. Murugadoss was arrested shortly before the film's completion. According to Salem Chandrasekhar, the producer of the Tamil original, he had not bought the rights to remake the film in Hindi.

In an interview with CNN-IBN, Anil Kapoor sarcastically mentioned that director Christopher Nolan, who directed Memento (2000), from which Murugadoss based off the story of Ghajini, was very upset with the latter. He reportedly told Anil, "I have heard that one of my films has been copied. I (Kapoor) said Ghajini. He was very upset about it. I told Aamir also. I told (Nolan) the film had just been released over there and is a big success. (He then said) Yeah, no money, no credit, no nothing.”

Reception

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 54% based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 5.90/10.

Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN wrote "Ghajini isn't a particularly good film, but entertainment it delivers by the bucketful." Martin D'Souza of Bollywood Trade News Network notes its flaws in the script, while praising the action sequences. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama remarked that the movie "is a winner all the way". Nikhat Kazmi of The Times of India praised the performance by Aamir Khan as its high point. Zee News described Aamir's performance as his best to date.

Sukanya Verma of Rediff describes the film as "a sleek album of dark memories, which are terrifying to relive and shattering to experience". Noyon Jyoti Parasara of AOL India said, "Most comparisons often point out that a remake is not as worthy.Ghajini however succeeds when it is compared to the Tamil version directed by the same director." Anupama Chopra of NDTV said "Ghajini isn't a great film or even a very good one but I recommend that you see it. It is, as we used to say in the old days, paisa vasool. Kaveree Bamzai of India Today said that "This is brutality, choreographed by a poet, and therefore that much more compelling."

Gaurav Malani of India Times criticises its length while praising the performance of the cast. Raja Sen of Rediff criticised the performance of Asin while concluding, "overwhelming feeling is one of regret". Shubhra Gupta of Express India concluded that Ghajini is too long, too violent, and criticised Jiah Khan's acting and dancing skills, but praised the performances of Aamir Khan and Asin. Hindustan Times wrote "You'd like to give Ghajini a long-term memory loss. Kya, kyon, kahan? Murugadoss.? Aamir? Asin? Who? Got to jog my memory... maybe after 15 minutes."

Box office

Ghajini released worldwide on 25 December 2008, on Christmas Day. The film became the first-ever Bollywood film to open in double digits, collecting ₹102 million ($1.27 million) on its opening day, followed by ₹118 million ($1.47 million), ₹102.5 million ($1.28 million) and ₹87.5 million ($1.09 million), taking its four-day opening weekend collection to ₹410 million ($5.13 million). The film went past ₹1 billion ($12.5 million) domestically in its fourth week, thus becoming the first ever Bollywood film to cross ₹100 crore net domestically. It was the first Bollywood film to enter the 100 crore club.

Ghajini became the highest-grossing Indian film ever at the time, and was declared an "All Time Blockbuster". Its record was surpassed a year later by another Aamir Khan film, 3 Idiots (2009).

Soundtrack

The film has six songs, including two remixes, composed by A. R. Rahman and with lyrics penned by Prasoon Joshi.

Reception

Bollywood Hungama wrote, "The music of Ghajini is all set to make waves way into 2009 after the Christmas release of the film. When 'best of the best' list would be compiled at the year end, it would be hard to ignore Ghajini."

Rediff.com gave it the highest possible rating of five stars with the reviewer praising Rahman saying, "This could just be one of his finest albums ever. Not just are the tracks great, but each one segues into the next with perfect unpredictability." According to the Indian trade website Box Office India, the soundtrack album sold about 1.9 million units, making it the year's best selling Bollywood music soundtrack album.