Spoiler warning !!!
Hell, that sounded just like a Wikipedia article... but then, for those of u who don't want me 2 spoil the movie for u, u can stop reading right here...
Mani Ratnam’s Guru is a story of a villager who dreams big and makes it big... Abhi's performance is one of his best in the title role as Gurukant Desai. The story follows his life starting as a teenager who travels to Turkey in search of work, and finds his inclinations to setting up his own "bij-nuss"... he finds lucrative ways of making money even in Turkey and returns to his village back in Gujarat as a young man who has made a little money in "phoren" lands... He wants to travel to Mumbai to sell polyester; but Guru needs more money to set up shop… he marries Sujatha (Aishwarya soon to be Bachchan Rai) only for the money he’ll get as dowry… Sujatha’s brother Jignesh plays a close friend of Guru’s, who becomes a business partner after Guru’s marriage…
The story then goes on to show how Guru fights the odds to start trading polyester in Mumbai’s Masjid Bunder area, and slowly goes on to expand his enterprise… Along the way he meets newspaper editor - Manik Dasgupta (Mithun-da), his grand-daughter Meenu (Vidya Balan), the journalist - Shyam Saxena (R. Madhavan) and others who help and/or oppose Guru and his ways… Through a series of expansions, IPOs, new plants et al, Guru & his Shakti Corp. reach the pinnacle by becoming “India ki No.1 company” (applause !!!)
Yes, Guru is shown bending and breaking laws, bribing officials and other corporate activities that easily classify as “un-ethical”, but Mani Ratnam somehow manages to show Guru in a positive light… Shyam keeps writing negative articles about Guru & his law-breaking schemes. Shyam regularly throws blows at him but Guru in the end always finds a way out…
The only failing point is peraps the music... A.R. Rahman has composed the score, but the songs are ill-placed and hamper the continuity of the screenplay... 'Tere Bina' is the best song by far... the songs also play in the background where they suit the situations more aptly...
All official announcements have denied any “relationship / resemblance to any persons, living or dead”, but anyone with a knowledge of Reliance & Dhirubhai Ambani’s past will easily have caught the obvious ‘inspiration’ drawn from the names I mentioned… For the uninitiated, Dhirubhai went to Yemen at the age of 16 where he worked for Royal Dutch Shell (in the movie, Guru worked for Burma Shell…) and returned to India to set up shop at Masjid Bunder for the trade of Polyester as well… The various scams of Dhirubhai are well chronicled in the unauthorized biography “The Polyester Prince” but have never been officially admitted (the book is banned in India)… Mithun heads the newspaper “Swatantra”, which has obvious similarities to Indian Express, which attacked Dhirubhai earlier. Guru’s scams are mysteriously similar to those allegedly done by Dhirubhai… Even the cars that Guru is shown to drive early in his career are the same that Dhirubhai is known to have driven…
And to top it all, Gurukant Desai is affectionately called “Gurubhai”, which has more than an obvious resemblance to Dhirubhai…
For the record, my frnd Nisheeth provided me with a commentary during the movie which pointed out the various similarities that I have mentioned above… But I have researched Dhirubhai Ambani (on Google & Wikipedia … :-D) after watching the movie and confirmed all these… I’ll post links to the articles after compiling them…
Well, that’s it for now…
Wishing Abhi n Ash all the Best !!!
