MOVIE REVIEW: Guru (2007)

Guru is a movie loosely based on the life of Dhirubhai Ambani, and his rise from his village to being one of the biggest corporations in India, facing many hurdles from the government and the media.

The movie might be peak of 2000's cinema, with the story being gripping till the end.

The movie has aged in some aspects too, like how sometimes soundtrack changes line-for-line to indicate to the audience how they should be feeling, or how 40 minutes of the movie is music alone (wonderful soundtrack by AR Rahman btw), but all these only make it a classical relic, as a future relic of the past (hopefully), and not something that wears the movie down.

The movie is littered with big names, such as Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, R Madhavan, Vidya Balan, Mithun Chakraborty, AR Rahman (music), Madras Talkies (direction and production), just to name a few.

All these big names come together with great chemistry (barring the awkwardness of said chemistry due to age. It's too soon to be vintage and too old to feel normal; it's awkward stage, as of 2022).

I also wish the movie focused more on the changes in the country, from pre-independence to how Gujjus in Bombay was normal as the whole region was one big state called the Bombay Presidency.

The movie also does a wonderful job with it’s shade of grey conflict where, instead of showing everyone is bad, it humanizes the villains of the movie, creating an "everyone is good" sort of narrative. So when Guru is chastised by his supporters, we don’t see him as a "bad guy" either.

This coupled with a strong anti-socialist message, which is the dominant and default ideology in most of the East. The movie will definitely be a future timeless classic (future because 15 years is still too soon to say so).

8/10