A critique I wrote on SRK's career graph
Apr 28, 2016 8:15:26 GMT
sady, dancelover, and 2 more like this
Post by aspiringfilmmaker on Apr 28, 2016 8:15:26 GMT
This is an analysis on SRK I wrote for my Hindi class which I would like to share here:
A typical Saturday morning in my household, circa 1998 - I am three years old, and I sit on my mother’s lap on the family room couch. She is making great efforts to feed me upma, a dish which I hated then, hate now, and will probably hate when I am 80 years old. The upma has successfully landed all over my tshirt and overalls but has failed to reach my stomach. As expected from a three-year-old, I make great efforts to resist, instead yearning for the Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms that most other children my age eat. In a last bid to get me to eat the upma, my father turns on the VCR and my eyes are immediately glued to Shahrukh Khan strumming away on the guitar in ‘Do Dil Mil Rahe Hain’ from ‘Pardes’, as I delightfully smile and clap my hands. The music passes by as my mom discreetly stuffs the upma in my mouth, and by the time we get to SRK grooving on the piano in ‘Chaand Taare’ from “Yes Boss”, my breakfast has already been complete.
This is the Shahrukh Khan that I grew up with as a child - a dynamic acting talent who brought a wide range of diversity to his roles. While obviously as a three-year-old, I made little sense of the images flashing past me, there was an inexplicable magic in his talents that captivated my imagination. Throughout the years, he has undoubtedly given some memorable performances in some truly welldirected films apart from my two favorites mentioned above, there have been ‘Baazigar’, ‘Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa’, ‘Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani’, ‘Ashoka’, ‘Paheli’, ‘Swades’, ‘Chak De India’, and ‘Fan’. Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa remains one of Khan’s personal favorites, and he even received the prestigious Critics Award for Best Actor, which is judged by a prestigious jury of distinguished personalities. The innocent yet heart-touching story of Sunil, a jilted lover who is determined to unite his beloved with the man she truly loves, remains one of the most touching love stories ever, more so than the overdone banalities which we will come to later. Swades, along with Aamir Khan’s Peepli Live to date remains one of the few efforts by a top Bollywood actor to address the issues plaguing India’s rural poor. But how many people have even seen or really care about these films? It is tragic that we associate a graduate of India’s prestigious National School of Drama with mediocrities like “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai”, “Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham”, and the numerous other fourword titles starting with the letter K, no thanks to the banal and overhyped Karan Johar, or the grossly overrated “DDLJ”, which while a decent film, does not really have anything novel to bring to the table. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against SRK’s collaborations with Yash Raj Films his collaborations with Yash Chopra like “Dil To Pagal Hai” and “Veer-Zaara” have been nothing short of poetry in motion, but that is due to the genius of the visionary we know as Mr. Yash Chopra, and not because of his mammoth production company which has become a pathetic shadow of its former majestic self.
Why do audiences fail to remember SRK’s collaborations with excellent directors like Subhash Ghai and Aziz Mirza? It was director Subhash Ghai that stepped out of his own comfort zone of over-the-top masala films like ‘Ram Lakhan’ and gave Khan the role of a lifetime in ‘Pardes’, a subtle yet powerful drama in which he beautifully portrayed an NRI musician who is caught between Western and Indian traditions. This was a role out of SRK’s own comfort zone as well, where he played a subdued character in contrast to his more energetic ones in the past. Director Aziz Mirza, who brought us SRK in wonderfully simple and realistic love stories like “Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman” and “Yes Boss”, gave us an SRK that the middleclass man can relate to, not the inexplicably rich Raj’s and Rahul’s of the films people can’t stop talking about.
We criticize Khan for being the terrible producer of films like “Ra.One”, “Chennai Express”, “Happy New Year”, and “Dilwale”, but fail to remember the classics his company produced before that. His first production “Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani”, was an unfortunate flop at the box office co-starring Juhi Chawla, another great talent who never received her due recognition. How many of you know that the film deals with the trauma of a rape victim’s family and the efforts of two journalists, played by SRK and Juhi, to get them justice? Such a story is truly relevant in modern Indian society, and yet we continue to romanticize SRK for mindlessly running around the Alps and mouthing inane dialogues like “Hum ek baar jeete hain...etc etc”. Films like Ashoka and Paheli, both of Khan’s home productions, do an excellent job of celebrating the essence and substance of Indian civilization, yet we continue to hype him to the skies for “Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham” which does a pathetic job at representing NRI culture. Another SRK flop, “Billu Barber”, was a simple and touching story about friendship, which for some reason went unnoticed by audiences who prefered to see Khan doing god knows what in “Ra.One”. We can now add ‘Fan’ to the list of SRK’s undeserving flops simply because the audience wasn’t willing to open their minds to see SRK in a tight and engaging film with no songs and incessant melodrama. So don’t complain next time SRK gives us films like “Dilwale” remember that the audience is responsible for making the wrong choices and bringing about this unfortunate trend.
A typical Saturday morning in my household, circa 1998 - I am three years old, and I sit on my mother’s lap on the family room couch. She is making great efforts to feed me upma, a dish which I hated then, hate now, and will probably hate when I am 80 years old. The upma has successfully landed all over my tshirt and overalls but has failed to reach my stomach. As expected from a three-year-old, I make great efforts to resist, instead yearning for the Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms that most other children my age eat. In a last bid to get me to eat the upma, my father turns on the VCR and my eyes are immediately glued to Shahrukh Khan strumming away on the guitar in ‘Do Dil Mil Rahe Hain’ from ‘Pardes’, as I delightfully smile and clap my hands. The music passes by as my mom discreetly stuffs the upma in my mouth, and by the time we get to SRK grooving on the piano in ‘Chaand Taare’ from “Yes Boss”, my breakfast has already been complete.
This is the Shahrukh Khan that I grew up with as a child - a dynamic acting talent who brought a wide range of diversity to his roles. While obviously as a three-year-old, I made little sense of the images flashing past me, there was an inexplicable magic in his talents that captivated my imagination. Throughout the years, he has undoubtedly given some memorable performances in some truly welldirected films apart from my two favorites mentioned above, there have been ‘Baazigar’, ‘Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa’, ‘Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani’, ‘Ashoka’, ‘Paheli’, ‘Swades’, ‘Chak De India’, and ‘Fan’. Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa remains one of Khan’s personal favorites, and he even received the prestigious Critics Award for Best Actor, which is judged by a prestigious jury of distinguished personalities. The innocent yet heart-touching story of Sunil, a jilted lover who is determined to unite his beloved with the man she truly loves, remains one of the most touching love stories ever, more so than the overdone banalities which we will come to later. Swades, along with Aamir Khan’s Peepli Live to date remains one of the few efforts by a top Bollywood actor to address the issues plaguing India’s rural poor. But how many people have even seen or really care about these films? It is tragic that we associate a graduate of India’s prestigious National School of Drama with mediocrities like “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai”, “Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham”, and the numerous other fourword titles starting with the letter K, no thanks to the banal and overhyped Karan Johar, or the grossly overrated “DDLJ”, which while a decent film, does not really have anything novel to bring to the table. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against SRK’s collaborations with Yash Raj Films his collaborations with Yash Chopra like “Dil To Pagal Hai” and “Veer-Zaara” have been nothing short of poetry in motion, but that is due to the genius of the visionary we know as Mr. Yash Chopra, and not because of his mammoth production company which has become a pathetic shadow of its former majestic self.
Why do audiences fail to remember SRK’s collaborations with excellent directors like Subhash Ghai and Aziz Mirza? It was director Subhash Ghai that stepped out of his own comfort zone of over-the-top masala films like ‘Ram Lakhan’ and gave Khan the role of a lifetime in ‘Pardes’, a subtle yet powerful drama in which he beautifully portrayed an NRI musician who is caught between Western and Indian traditions. This was a role out of SRK’s own comfort zone as well, where he played a subdued character in contrast to his more energetic ones in the past. Director Aziz Mirza, who brought us SRK in wonderfully simple and realistic love stories like “Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman” and “Yes Boss”, gave us an SRK that the middleclass man can relate to, not the inexplicably rich Raj’s and Rahul’s of the films people can’t stop talking about.
We criticize Khan for being the terrible producer of films like “Ra.One”, “Chennai Express”, “Happy New Year”, and “Dilwale”, but fail to remember the classics his company produced before that. His first production “Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani”, was an unfortunate flop at the box office co-starring Juhi Chawla, another great talent who never received her due recognition. How many of you know that the film deals with the trauma of a rape victim’s family and the efforts of two journalists, played by SRK and Juhi, to get them justice? Such a story is truly relevant in modern Indian society, and yet we continue to romanticize SRK for mindlessly running around the Alps and mouthing inane dialogues like “Hum ek baar jeete hain...etc etc”. Films like Ashoka and Paheli, both of Khan’s home productions, do an excellent job of celebrating the essence and substance of Indian civilization, yet we continue to hype him to the skies for “Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham” which does a pathetic job at representing NRI culture. Another SRK flop, “Billu Barber”, was a simple and touching story about friendship, which for some reason went unnoticed by audiences who prefered to see Khan doing god knows what in “Ra.One”. We can now add ‘Fan’ to the list of SRK’s undeserving flops simply because the audience wasn’t willing to open their minds to see SRK in a tight and engaging film with no songs and incessant melodrama. So don’t complain next time SRK gives us films like “Dilwale” remember that the audience is responsible for making the wrong choices and bringing about this unfortunate trend.