Ghajini

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Ghajini

Directed by	A.R. Murugadoss
Produced by	Salem .A. Chandrasekar
Starring	Surya Sivakumar Asin Thottumkal Nayantara Pradeep Rawat Mano Bala Riyaz Khan
Music by	Harris Jayaraj
Cinematography	R.D Rajashekar
Distributed by	Sri Saravana Movies
Release date(s)	September 29, 2005
Running time	180 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	Rs.7.5 Crores
IMDb profile

Ghajini (Tamil: கஜினி) is a Tamil film directed by A.R. Murugadoss; released on September 29, 2005. The film stars Surya Sivakumar, Asin Thottumkal, Nayantara, Pradeep Rawat and Riyaz Khan. The film was inspired by Christopher Nolan's critically acclaimed Memento. It is also being remade into Hindi by A.R. Murugadoss again; starring Aamir Khan and Asin Thottumkal playing the same role.

1 Plot
2 Cast and Crew
3 Soundtrack
4 Awards
5 About the movie title, Ghajini
6 Box Office
7 Trivia
8 See also
9 References
10 External links

[edit] Plot

The story is about Sanjay Ramaswamy (Surya), a rich businessman who owns a cellular company named Air Voice and the events surrounding his relationship with Kalpana (Asin).

Kalpana, an advertisement model goes around telling her advertisement crew that she is the love interest of Sanjay. She does this in spite of she having never met him and also goes to the extent of giving an interview about her relationship to a popular magazine. Sanjay happens to hear about this through the media and wants to settle scores with her. On his way, he catches a fleeting glimpse of a young woman (who happens to be Kalpana) helping handicapped children to cross a street. It is love at first sight for Sanjay. He moves on to confront Kalpana at her advertisement studio. He is pleasantly surprised to realize that she is the same helpful woman he saw a while ago. He chooses to hide the fact from her that he is Sanjay, calling himself as Manohar. Kalpana eventually falls in love with him.

Once, while on a train to Mumbai, Kalpana saves a group of young girls from abuse by a group of goons led by Lakshman (Pradeep Rawat). After a few days, the same goons come to Kalpana's house in order to avenge their embarrassment. Incidentally, Sanjay arrives at the scene and fights off the goons, but during the ensuing fight, Kalpana is murdered. The irony showcased is that Kalpana never finds out that he is Sanjay. Lakshman then strikes the downcast Sanjay on his head severely with a metal rod. Sanjay survives the blow, but suffers from a short-term amnesia. At any given time, he does not remember anything that happened more than 15 minutes back. He determines to take revenge on those responsible for Kalpana's death. The rest of the story is about how Sanjay, along with a medical college student Chitra (Nayantara), goes about finding Lakshman and the goons despite the former's memory loss.

[edit] Cast and Crew

Cast :

Surya - Sanjay Ramaswamy
Asin - Kalpana
Nayantara - Chitra
Pradeep Rawat - Lakshman and his brother (double role)
Riyaz Khan - Police Officer

Director : A. R. Murugadoss
Producer : Salem A. Chandrasekar
Cinematographer : R. D. Rajasekar
Music Composer : Harris Jayaraj
Editing : Antony, Suresh Urs
Stunts : Kanal Kannan

[edit] Soundtrack

The soundtrack features 5 songs composed by Harris Jayaraj, with lyrics by Na Muthukumar. All the songs, especially Sutrum Vizhi were very popular and made Jayaraj the top music director in Kollywood.

Oru Maalai (5:54) - Karthik
X Machi (4:12) - Maathanhi, & Naahul
Sutrum Vizhi (5:18) - Sriram Parthasarathy & Bombay Jayashree
Rahathulla (4:50) - Anupamma
Rangola Ola (4:26) - Shankar Mahadevan & Sujatha

[edit] Awards

Tamilnadu Government Award for Best Film ^[1]
Tamilnadu Government Award for Best Actor (Surya) ^[2]
Filmfare Best Actress Award (Asin) ^[3]
Filmfare Best Editing Award (Antony)^{[citation needed]}

[edit] About the movie title, Ghajini

The title is said to be inspired by an invader of India named Mahmud Ghazni who failed many times until he succeeded, much like the protagonist of the movie fails many times and then succeeds in achieving his goals. Finally, on the 18th time, he was successful.

[edit] Box Office

The movie had a 100% opening. It managed to sustain the tremendous opening, and went on to be Surya's biggest hit at the time.^{[dubious – discuss]} It collected enough revenue to make it one of the three highest grossing Tamil-language films of 2005 followed by Anniyan and Chandramukhi.

The Hindi version of Ghajini with pre-release movie rights becoming hot property Ghajini has earned an estimated Rs 90 crore by selling its distribution rights. Last year, Om Shanti Om was the top grosser in distribution rights, it sold the rights to Eros for a reported Rs 73 crore.

[edit] Trivia

To play the lead role of this film A. R. Murugadoss approached two other heroes; Ajith Kumar, Madhavan, but both rejected of date problems. Ajith accepted the role and also photo session took place but subsequently dropped out. Then the role finally went to Surya who grabbed it and it turned out to be the biggest commercial successes in his career.
Meera Jasmine was the first choice to play the role of Kalpana. But she dropped the project and later replaced by Asin which helped her to establish as the top heroine of Tamil Film Industry^[4]

The concept is based on an English movie Memento which is directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori". It 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.