My Name is Khan and “I am not a Terrorist"

Raj S. Rangarajan

A regular Bollywood film with a 9/11 flavor thrown in – My Name is Khan – will perhaps be more popular in North America than in India. After that fateful day in 2001, more movies seem to sell better here. Remember New York starring John Abraham and Katrina Kaif and Kurbaan 2009 with Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor, to name merely two.

While screening of the film ran into problems last month in Mumbai following boycotts, it has virtually been running to packed cinema houses in North America over weekends. According to Gitesh Pandya, who monitors all film billings for Hollywood and Bollywood movies, 17 days following release, this was Shah Rukh Khan’s top-grossing film in North America with total sales of $3,636,000 that surpassed SRK's old record of $3,597,372 for 2007's Om Shanti Om. It continues to play in 119 theaters across the U.S. and Canada in its third week of screening. This is reportedly Karan Johar’s biggest film ever.

Shah Rukh Khan (Rizvan Khan) and Kajol Devgan (Mandira Rathore) are the main characters in Khan and their chemistry on the screen is a subject of many a speculative, albeit favorable story in the film press, and that aspect is just one of the reasons why director Karan Johar had no hesitation in casting this pair.

As a child Rizvan (SRK) suffers from Asperger Syndrome, a kind of autism disorder that makes the patient behave clumsily sometimes in social interactions. In Khan, Rizvan tends to repeat his behavior patterns just as Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) constantly did in the 1988 Hollywood hit movie, Rain Main, that also starred Tom Cruise.

A story of love between a man and a woman and of that between mother and son – something many a Hindi-movie fan can relate to – is the basic theme that writers, Shibani Bathija and Karan Johar (who is also the director) have captured admirably. Rizvan, who happens to be a Muslim woos Mandira who happens to be a Hindu in spite of handicaps in his life. She is a single mother with a son.

After their mother’s passing in India, Rizvan’s younger brother, portrayed by Jimmy Shergill invites Rizvan to move to San Francisco. When Rizvan wants to marry Mandira who runs a successful hairdressing outfit, Jimmy’s character objects but never explains why. The story faces its major twist when Mandira’s son is beaten up in a playground by boys of Caucasian origin. Motives are attributed to the incident since the post-9/11 scenario in America is an easy excuse.

No investigation is conducted by anyone and soon the boy’s death is a closed chapter for the authorities. But, not for Mandira who has been personally affected. The racial profiling mindset in the movie is telling in that when Mandira declares, if my son’s name was Rathore – not Khan – he would have been alive. In a sense that reality is constantly faced and thought of by residents in North America though perhaps not articulated in public for obvious reasons.

People who constantly experience overt discrimination in some degree or other can relate to this movie directly. Each parent and child in North America has his or her own defence mechanism to deal with such real-life situations and this movie drives close to home. After all its just a movie is the normal rationalization of mature adults.

In another scene, in a mosque some Muslims are seen praying and plotting. In a dramatic exchange when the Muslim doctor who preaches revenge against white folk in the confines of a place of worship, Rizvan boldly lays out his understanding of what the Prophet really said and meant.

In small measure, that verbal exchange in the movie epitomizes conflicts one sees in schools, colleges or in communities in North America and perhaps in other countries as well. One is often concerned about how to behave in a social situation – whether at a movie, among friends and peers or even on a playground. What is politically correct these days?

In the movie, however, one cannot judge whether the incident was racially-motivated or whether it was the effect of a smaller boy – a South Asian kid – taking on a bigger boy, who happened to be Caucasian.

Traditional Southern hospitality gets a shot in the arm when a black family welcomes in to their fold a drifting Rizvan who is temporarily confused and lost after his wife throws him out. To prove himself, he single-handedly helps a community suffering in a flood (though he is sometimes spaced out) and attempts to win back his beau.

While Rizvan Khan is constantly muttering that he is not a terrorist but wants to meet the American president it is never explained why he wishes to meet the leader. Is it because his mother had inculcated in him a desire to do so? Or is it because Mandira, in a fit of pique, challenges him to do so.

In happy scenes a fetching Kajol sparkles, but SRK tends to overact specially when he overdoes the autistic bit -- which is perhaps difficult -- specially since the movie is not about the disease but about relationships.

One is impressed with subtle nuances the director and cameramen have accomplished in terms of capturing emotions on the playing ground where a boy is beaten up mercilessly or after the emotional suffixes that help the boys confess. Niranjan Iyengar’s dialogue is pithy and cinematographer, Ravi K. Chandran has proven once again that he is a classy performer. Mostly shot in San Francisco, the 2-1/2 hour Fox Searchlight film moves fast and doesn’t follow any formula – a lofty tribute to director Karan.
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[Raj S. Rangarajan is a New York based freelance writer. He covers trend stories on art, reviews books and films for media based in New York, Toronto, Republic of Korea and India.]