Guna

Recently, I watched this social media hyped movie Manjummel Boys. In this movie, there is a cameo song of Kamal Haasan's movie Guna (1991). Eventually, This song "Kanmani Anbodu Kadhalan" revived on social media due to its relativity with cave sequence and offcourse the legendary music composer Ilaiyaraaja. Scrolling through Reels on Instagram I found the original video of this song and this intrigued me to watch this movie.

These events took me to watch Guna movie. So I started searching for a English subtitle version of this movie because I am a North Indian person and luckily Airtel Xstream helped me out. It's available on YouTube in Tamil but the subtitles are missing. So Airtel Xstream has it.

The story revolves around a mentally disturbed man Guna who dreams of a Goddess named Abhirami to come and marry him. One day seeing a girl at the temple he presumed her as Abhirami and kidnap her.

This movie brings so much satisfaction by witnessing its soulful story and innocent characters. A Bombay actress Roshini plays Abhirami and unfortunately, it was her first and last screen appearance as she moved to USA and quit acting.

I hope this movie brings joy for you as well. Thanks!

From the one shot with which the movie begins, the one thing that kinda haunted me throughout the movie was how this really needs a restoration instead of this old capture for the VHS that doesn't do any justice to the technical mastery of this movie. The cinematography is outstanding with the use of so many long oners and other clever usage of shots which accentuates the themes as well as Kamal Haasan's brilliant performance.

The film also seems to be highly influential in Indian cinema as I can see the influence in films of various languages. Although, there are aspects I'm not too fond of it too.

Way too many people seemed to have interpretations that are closer to the trend of films this started where psychotic love was glorified. Here, they have tried to show how even the girl is broken inside, a bit like Alia in Highway but not that explicit. Gunaa's love is pure but that isn't pure love as many like to interpret it. The divine metaphors or Gunaa's delusions are there because of how the world treats people but at the same time, the film is also clear about not giving those delusions legitimacy. The existence of these thoughts itself is clearly shown as deliberate poisoning of his simpler mind. The film has some confusion here to confirm his victimhood or divinity because it wants to be both. But even with that, it was a pretty incredible film that tried to do a lot of things within its framework.

Gunaa (1991) : Brief Review -

Gunaa may have an Outlook of Psychological disorder and abnormality but from Inside it's very Intellectual and absolutely Normal. Kamal Haasan deserves more hype for this Classic. In technical words, Gunaah is a psychological Romantic tragedy but one has to understand what this film actually teaches to normal people by being abnormal itself. Recently i have used these words abnormality and normality for two outstanding films, one is Bollywood movie 'Ahaan' and second one is Korean Masterpiece 'Miracle In Cell No. 7' (you can take it as informal recomendations) and now i came across this film 'Gunaa' which was made exactly 2 decades ago. So, i have to loud for its path-breaking timing and how sensibly it deal with the subject needs even louder praise. A neurodivergent individual escapes the family he despises and the asylum he is kept in by creating fantasies to marry his dreamgirl. The following events shows us that how this highly educated normal girl falls in love with this abnormal guy and then how the so called normal people around them causes them hurt. There are many scenes in this film which i wll keep with me forever. This kidnapping formula is old, it doesn't offer anything great but the character's point of view and the perspective it offers are the two things which makes it special and different from other romantic films. It is still very much predictable film with few fantasy theories co-incidentally or intentionally completed by reality. Believe me, that's some DRAMA to watch. Kamal Haasan as Guna is extraordinary. I would take this one directly into his Top 10 performances and perhaps even in Top 5. It's better than his many other popular ones and deserves same hype, No, more hype actually. Well done Santhana Bharathi and the entire team of Gunaa. I hope our so called Sane society understand this film.

RATING - 8/10*

By - #samthebestest.

Like many Kamal Hassan movies, this was a movie that was under appreciated during it's release and gained it's cult status only over time. This movie has served as the inspiration behind many others with similar themes that came out decades later. It's a story of madness, obsession, tragedy and eternal love, with impeccable performances and outstanding cinematography. Guna is a movie that portrays extreme contrasts in it's subject matter. On one hand it's a love story at it's purest, where the millionaire heiress having lost both her parents by then, realizes that her crazy abductor is a much better person than the people she is surrounded by all circling her like vultures for her money, and a life with Guna seeming more meaningful to her than the life she had lived till then. On the other hand, you see the sleaziness of life in brothels, the hero having been raised in one due to his birth father abandoning his mother, and the dismal plight of the under privileged suffering from mental illness. The hero cannot bear the disgust of his existence that he convinces himself to be god Siva who has taken this birth only to be cleansed by Abhirami when they unite in marital bliss. A life riddled with mental illness, abandonment issues, and abuse, his only hope and aim being to find Abhirami so he can be cleansed and start anew with a clean slate. Illayaraja's legendary music adds more life to this already brilliant movie.

Good Movie. Everybody acted good in the movie. Songs and BGM in the movie were excellent. The movie somewhat lagged at 1st half. The movie was so interesting at 2nd half. This movie is one of the Best of Kamal Haasan. Good Movie.