Revisiting Rajkumar Gupta’s ‘Aamir’ As It Clocks 17 Years
Rajkumar Gupta’s Aamir, released on June 6, 2008, could have easily slipped into being a heavy-handed polemical study of the isolation and persecution of the Indian Muslim and his constant battle to remain part of the mainstream even as he’s provoked and instigated from both ends to keel over and surrender to the forces of chaos, anarchy and annihilation. Ironically, a work of art like Aamir embraces chaos to create a universe that is in a strange way the opposite of destruction.
Persistently, Aamir repeatedly invokes images of ominous doom as we see the protagonist wind his way through a dreadful day that would end in abject tragedy. His is by far one of the finest attempts in recent times to explore the psyche of a modern ‘foreign-returned’ Indian as he’s plunged headlong into the Kafkaesque nightmare of crime, grime, extremism and fanaticism in the underbelly of the big, bright and bewildering city of Mumbai.
It is a Swades on skids, hurtling down into an abyss of unpatriotic instigations. From the moment Aamir (Rajeev Khandelwal) touches down at Mumbai’s international airport, what assails you is that overpowering sense of an individual’s struggle to survive in a pitiless and often unforgiving city.
The taut and tense narration finds supreme sustenance from its outdoors. Indeed, apart from Rajeev and his portrayal of the reluctant hero, the real protagonist of Aamir is Mumbai. And yet director Raj Kumar Gupta pulls it off with a full-throttle drama that leaves us gasping for breath. Indeed, we’ve never seen a screen hero run so fast and so relentlessly. Rajeev chases fugitive taxis and petty criminals through highways and which stretch into acres of aching squalor. Physically and emotionally taxing, the role gives Rajeev Khandelwal a chance to make the kind of debut actors dream about in their worst nightmares. The debutant doesn’t let go of his character for even a split second. From those skilful long-shots of him running on the highways to those tight close-ups expressing hurt, anger, anguish, desperation and occasional gratitude (watch him when the prostitute helps him out or towards the finale on the bus when looking out of the window he thinks his ordeal has ended) Rajeev knows his job thoroughly.
Rajeev Khandelwal spoke on Aamir to Subhash K Jha. “Every memory of Aamir is so vivid that it seems it happened yesterday. Not because it was my first film but because of how it all came together. How Babul(executive producer from Miditech) reached out to me, how I read the script during my flight from Mumbai to Delhi, and how I wondered why no so-called ‘star’ is not doing it. I met with the director Raj Kumar Gupta and told him to test me but he was confident, how (executive producer) Anurag Kashyap went from one producer to another but they weren’t willing to back a popular ‘TV actor’ till he met Vikas Bahl… Raj Kumar and I did workshops. Nawazuddin Siddiqui bhai was assigned to me for all the physical workshops which we did on the backroads of Lokhandwala. I was nervous before the start of the shoot because it was me in every frame of the film. We shot the film at actual locations with the crew pulling off almost the impossible at times. Cinematographer Alphonse Roy would make me stand with a grey card after every shot to get his colour grades right. Anurag Kashyap danced on top of a table after seeing the Final Cut. We loved the background score and music by Amit Trivedi. The film industry reacted very favourably to the film. Finally, it dawned on me that this will be remembered forever…everything is so vivid. This was a film made by all first-timers in every department of the film.”
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