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Star cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol
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What’s Good: Performances of the lead players; songs.
What’s Bad:The screenplay; the climax.
Verdict: MY NAME IS KHAN may find favour with the élite audience but it will be rejected by the Indian masses.
Dharma Productions Pvt. Ltd. and Red Chillies Entertainment’s My Name Is Khan (UA) is the story of Rizvan Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome. He is very intelligent and has a photographic memory but he has some major problems like he takes the spoken word literally, and he is scared of yellow colour and of noise. He meets Mandira (Kajol) when he lands in San Francisco in the nineties to live with his brother, Zakir (Jimmy Shergill), and his wife, Hasina (Soniya Jehan). Mandira is a single mother and her world is her little, school-going child, Sameer (Yuvaan Makkar). Rizvan marries Mandira and soon, Sameer Rathore becomes Sameer Khan.Life for the Khans changes after the twin tower bombings of September 11, 2001 in New York. Thanks to their last name, they are viewed as terrorists by their acquaintances.Why, Sameer’s best friend, Reese Garrick (Kenton Duty), also starts hating him because his father has been killed at the hands of Muslim terrorists elsewhere. One day, Sameer is killed by a group of white bullies in school, ostensibly because they hate him for being a Muslim. Reese tries his best to save Sameer but fails. Rizvan and Mandira are crestfallen. Mandira blames the Khan surname for her personal loss and asks her husband to get out of her life. In a fit of rage, she tells him to, in the alternative, convince the president of America that although his name is Khan, he isn’t a terrorist. Rizvan takes her words literally and sets out from San Francisco to meet the US president in Washington.His journey is not easy by any standards. On one occasion, he is arrested and put behind bars on suspicion of being a terrorist himself.
He is freed only when an earlier phone call by him to the FBI helps it in nabbing a real terrorist. Rizvan continues his journey but by now, he has become a hero of sorts as the media has picked up the story of his illegal detention, release and also of his quest to meet the president for reasons which nobody can comprehend. He is close to meeting Mandira who has come to seek his release from jail, but doesn’t confront her because he had vowed not to meet her till he had met the president.Even while his journey is on, he touches the lives of people he comes in contact with. Two such people are a mother-son duo from Wilhemina, whom he comes to save, after travelling miles, when they alongwith thousands of others get stranded in floods. Again, the media makes a hero out of Rizvan Khan for reach- ing out where the government does not. Mandira as well as Rizvan’s brother and sister-in-law unite with Rizvan in Wilhemina and ask him to return. But Rizvan must meet the president to, as he feels, win back Mandira’s love. What happens there- after is revealed in the climax.
The film has an interesting story (Shibani Bathija) inasmuch as it takes up for the Muslims who, unfortunately, are all viewed with a lot of suspicion post-9/11. However, Shibani Bathija’s screenplay is bad. It may have some truly masterly scenes which would be loved by the audience, especially the Muslims across the world, but they are too few and far between. For the major part of the film, the drama is boring and preaches more than entertaining the audience.It goes back and forth (flashback and present times), confusing the audience. In fact, a linear narration would’ve served two purposes: it would not have confused the viewers, and it would have helped in creating an emotional connection between the viewers and Rizvan Khan.
But because Rizvan’s present (in which he manages everything independently, that too, pretty well) is shown to the audience before his childhood (in which he has to face humiliation from insensitive people), the audiences in general are not able to sympathize with him as much as they ought to have in a film of this kind. This is a major flaw in Bathija’s screenplay because the foundation (emotional bonding between the audience and Rizvan Khan) of the drama becomes very weak. Even otherwise, most of the emotional scenes fail to touch the heart.Although the film is a love story, the viewer’s heart does not go out to Rizvan or Mandira when they separate. And because of this, the viewer does not pray for their coming together. One major reason for this lack of rooting for the two love birds is Mandira’s obstinate stand much after her emotional outburst which had led to Rizvan leaving home. She tells her sister-in-law, she cannot forgive Rizvan as there is no place for love in her life now because love would weaken her resolve to get justice for her dead child by getting his killers arrested.
This doesn’t ring true at all simply because Rizvan had never told her not to seek justice. Mandira could have easily sought justice along with her husband. Only thing, then he wouldn’t need to go to meet the US president, which is the crux of the story. In other words, if the reason for Rizvan to undertake the journey was to be solid, Mandira had to be shown as crazy as she has been in the film (to ask her husband to go to the president). But so that she does not come across as a vamp with the passage of time, the reason she gives her friend doesn’t serve the purpose.And frankly, what’s in it for Rizvan Khan and Mandira even if he succeeds in meeting the president, which he ultimately does?
Will the meeting make their dead son come alive? One view point is that Rizvan has set out to meet the president for a much bigger mission – of pleading the innocence of ordinary Muslims – but that view point will not appeal to the masses because we all already know that just being a Muslim doesn’t brand one as being a terrorist. Except for giving Rizvan Khan and Mandira lip sympathy, there is little the US president can do – and does. Is that why Rizvan Khan undertook the journey? The élite audience may laud Rizvan for this but the general masses, especially the non-Muslims, won’t be impressed. Yes, had there been an element of benefit for the Khans (other than getting the stigma attached to their last name removed, which, in any case, no intelligent or thinking adult would believe that it existed in the first place), besides the larger benefit to the Muslim community, the audience would’ve experienced a feeling of elation.
But the manner in which the drama ends, one is not even sure if the Muslims (in the drama) lived a more respectable life ever after simply because one Rizvan Khan met the US president. Here, it must be pointed out that Mandira’s outburst, after her son’s murder, that the people in the town where they lived, hated him, post-9/11 (ostensibly because of his last name (Khan)), doesn’t appeal because she knows that he is no terrorist. And, therefore, while Rizvan takes her every word as the truth, the audience still remains unconvinced.It is not just Mandira’s violent rush of emotions in front of Rizvan after her son’s death that is unconvincing. There are several things sought to be established more through dialogues and less through substantive scenes.
For instance, the television channels announce that the whole of America is waiting to know what Khan wants to tell the president, but the audience doesn’t get to see this convincingly enough, through scenes. The hype looks more media-made than real because of the above reason. Similarly, Sameer’s death appears to the audience to be more a case of bullies going berserk and killing him rather than a case of hate crime because he is a Muslim. Yet, the drama that follows would have the audience believe (again, merely because of the dialogues) that Sameer was murdered because he was a Muslim. What’s even more noteworthy is that Sameer’s friend, Reese Garrick, who actually believed him to be a terrorist, had tried his level best to save Sameer from the bullies.
The journey of Rizvan is too long and boring to interest the audience. His deeds in the flood-ravaged Wilhemina do show his humane side but they don’t strike an emotional chord, probably because it is an alien land for the Indian audience and also the people being helped are foreigners, not Indians. And frankly, that was never Rizvan’s mission. Therefore, the entire Wilhemina episode is rather boring.
There is so much usage of English in the film that its appeal would be severely restricted as people in smaller centers would not be able to understand the dialogues.
Coming to the staple ingredients of a wholesome entertainer, they are romance, emotions, comedy, drama and action (if it is an action film). Since this is not an action fare, one would expect the other ingredients to be present in good measure. But while emotions fail to touch the heart, the romance between an ‘abnormal’ guy and a single mother will not gladden hearts. There is inherent comedy in Rizvan Khan’s behavior but it evokes laughter at some places only. The drama holds more appeal for the class audience among the Muslim population than for the masses among Muslims and other communities.
When the screenplay has such gaping holes, a point like Mandira referring to her husband as Khan (instead of Rizvan – perhaps, only because the film is titled My Name Is Khan and not My Name Is Rizvan) seems too minor an irritant. Similarly, Mandira actually smiling (!!) (instead of shedding a tear) when the US president offers his condolences on her son’s death (akin to heroic Indian army men being honoured posthumously at the hands of the president of India – do the widows smile on receiving the award of honour or shed tears?) looks ridiculous, to say the least, but that won’t really change the fate of the film!
The film doesn’t have much to uplift the spirits of the people watching it as it is quite boring and depressing, besides being slow. The pace does pick up after interval but overall, there is stuff which could impress the class and the Muslim audience, not viewers across the board.
One would’ve expected performances in this kind of an issue-based film to be of a very high order, especially because it features two superstars. But while the acting is good, it isn’t outstanding. Shah Rukh Khan acts well and is true to his character. He endears himself in the scenes in which he feels shy. But making him constantly talk at length about the history of new places or about the background of people is not an intelligent move because so much of verbosity bores the audience. Kajol also acts ably. She has very few scenes for a good part of the second half, something her fans won’t like. Jimmy Shergill gets limited scope and is okay. Soniya Jehan leaves a mark. Zarina Wahab is extremely natural. Katie Amanda Keane (as Sarah Garrick), Domnique Renda (as Mark Garrick), Kenton Duty, Parvin Dabas, Arif Zakaria, Jennifer Escholos (as Mama Jenny), Adrian Turner (as Joel), Navneet Nishan, Vinay Pathak, S.M. Zaheer, Sumeet Raghavan, Tarun Mansukhani and Christopher B. Duncan (as US president Barack Obama) lend fair support. Child actor Tanay Chheda (as young Rizvan Khan) is excellent. Yuvaan Makkar (as Sameer) does quite well.
Karan Johar’s direction is fair but the emotional impact of the drama is missing and that’s a red mark on his report card. His narrative style will be hailed by the class audience and the public in the Overseas territories because there is no melodrama, but the Indian audience will not really like the understated drama. Music (Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy) is very soulful. ‘Sajda’, ‘Tere naina’ and ‘Khuda’ songs are all very appealing. Song picturisations (Farah Khan) are good. Ravi K. Chandran’s cinematography is splendid. Action scenes (Sham Kaushal and Spiro Razatos) are well-composed. Sharmishta Roy’s sets are lovely. Deepa Bhatia’s editing is sharp but there’s little she has been able to do about the inherently slow pace of the drama. Dialogues (Niranjan Iyengar and Shibana Bathija) are striking at places only. Production values are grand.
On the whole, My Name Is Khan is far from entertaining and also too boring for the general masses. For the heavy budget at which it has been made, it will keep its worldwide distributors (Fox Searchlight) in the red. Business in big cities, especially in South India, Muslim centres and Overseas will be better but it will be below the mark in North India as also in smaller centres and single-screen cinemas. It may be appreciated by the class audience but the masses will reject the film.
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