If the movies are truly a common experience, and globalisation is a commercial fact, then the idea that Hollywood is the source for the vast majority of pictures seen by Australian audiences may eventually change. My Name is Khan is a production from the already oversized Indian film industry, but it’s being released worldwide on virtually the same day and date by a Hollywood distributor. The film, an awkward mixture of comedy and melodrama, has a universal message and, as a sign of future intentions, it’s trying to reach a similarly broad audience.
Rizwan Khan is a Muslim Indian who has been raised by his mother to look beyond the divides of religion and nationality. 'There are good people that do good deeds, and bad people who do bad deeds," she tells him, but distinctions are not easy for the boy (Slumdog Millionaire’s Tanay Chheda), who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome. A form of autism, Asperger’s leaves him scared of sharp noises, mechanically inclined, fond of routine and uncomfortable with physical contact. Any city, let alone Mumbai, is full of uncertainty.
His youth is seen in flashback, but the majority of the storyline unfolds in America, where an adult Rizwan (Shahrukh Khan) goes to live in the late 1990s, joining his younger brother, an entrepreneur, in San Francisco. Selling beauty products to hair salons, he meets Mandira (Kajol), a fellow Indian expatriate who has been abandoned by her husband following an arranged marriage and has adapted to life as a single mother.
Some of the assumptions about Bollywood films do not apply to My Name is Khan – no-one, for example, breaks into song and dance. But it does veer dramatically in tone: much of the first act is concerned with Rizwan’s shambolic courtship of Mandira, which begins with him blurting out 'marry me?" and ends with her coming to love the man beneath the inarticulate public face. It is shot with a bright – yellow aside – palette and a crowd pleasing momentum; San Francisco is seen with a travel guide’s eye and Kajol is impeccably lit and photographed (the various female stars of Valentine’s Day would be jealous of the craftsmanship given over to her).
Shahrukh Khan is a romantic idol in India, but here he pays attention to the technical details of his performance as well as playing for sly laughs. Lips pursed, his head moves in short, unexpected bursts, sitting at odd angles to his body. He’s playing a man annoyed by the inaccuracies of language, because he cannot distinguish a casual saying from a statement of facts. That’s made explicit in the film’s second act, which takes My Name is Khan into darker themes, which unfold after the events of 9/11.
As a Muslim in America, the harmless Rizwan exposes his family to racism and harassment. When it affects his stepson, Sam, it is too much for Mandira, and they’re parted, leaving the final act to be one of redemption, as Rizwan – in a broad nod to Forrest Gump – travels across America trying to meet the U.S. President (first George W. Bush, then Barack Obama) to explain that not all Muslims are terrorists.
Karan Johar’s film is a message picture, and like many in that genre it runs overly long as it assiduously works to make its point. Rizwan, unable to comprehend the world’s failings, is a symbolic presence, but Khan’s likable performance gives some sense of personal humanity to the character. There’s no doubt that he’s verging on the saintly, but when you consider that cinemas in India that were planning to show My Name is Khan were vandalised this week by Hindu extremists angered by cricket-related remarks made by the leading man (like his character, Shahrukh Khan is Muslim), you can begin to understand why the movie is so pointed.
An apt comparison are the films directed by Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful, The Tiger and the Snow), which met the grimmest of international events with a clown’s bittersweet touch. My Name is Khan isn’t as accomplished, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be seeing more Bollywood titles made for an international audience in our cinemas.
