‘My Name Is Khan’: Love in the time of terrorism
February 14, 2010
Starring Shahrukh Khan, Kajol
My Name Is Khan is the third major Bollywood film in the last year to deal with religious discrimination in the U.S., but while the other two—Kurbaan and New York—are terrorist thrillers, My Name Is Khan is a love story with 9/11 as the backdrop. It reunites famous screen pair Shahrukh Khan and Kajol, who haven’t appeared in a film together in nine years.
Despite the self-reference in the title, Khan doesn’t play a cartoonish version of himself as he has in recent films (Billu, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Om Shanti Om). Instead, he stretches and wonderfully succeeds at portraying a man with a mild form of autism. The character, Rizvan Khan, is a Muslim Indian, who moves to San Francisco, where he sells beauty products to hair salons, woos a Hindu divorcée, Mandira (Kajol), and endears himself to her young son with his good-heartedness. After the World Trade Center is attacked and his family becomes the victim of religious bigotry and violence, his marriage falls apart.
The director, Karan Johar, is an emotional maestro, who previously helmed the hit romantic dramas Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), and he specializes in the soaring heights of love and its devastating landings. When his lens is trained on relationships, all that melodrama is intensely pleasurable, but when he broadens his perspective to include the social landscape of post-9/11 America, it’s painfully hokey. Rizvan’s cross-country journey to meet the U.S. president and tell him he’s not a terrorist is over-the-top, especially when he ends up in a hurricane-hit Georgia town. A film that cautions about stereotyping Muslims should be more careful about stereotyping other groups, and its dated caricature of Southern Blacks is inappropriate.
Still, the film’s message of religious tolerance is sorely needed in both the U.S. and India, as evidenced by Shahrukh Khan’s own recent experiences. The Muslim actor was detained and questioned by immigration officials last August at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, which made headlines worldwide and outraged many Indians. Then, days before the release of My Name Is Khan, Mumbai’s Hindu nationalist political party, Shiv Sena, threatened to disrupt the film’s premiere because Khan, who owns a professional Indian cricket team, said Pakistani players should have been included in the league’s recent draft. Scores of police guarded the city’s theaters, protesters were arrested, and the film opened to packed houses—a testament not only to Khan’s star power but also to the number of moviegoers who share the film’s liberal sentiments. Too bad it fails to deliver a better story.
My Name Is Khan is rated Skip.
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