Film review: My Name Is Khan

My Name Is Khan
A Karan Johar film starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol

(May contain some spoilers)

A film about an Indian Muslim with Aspergers coming to terms with the world post-9/11, where most of the dialogue is spoken in Hindi, sounds like a difficult pitch to sell to the world, let alone the Indian market, without a reputable star. My Name Is Khan is that film, and it has three of India's leading lights - director Karan Johar, actress Kajol, and the man widely considered as the most bankable international film star, Shah Rukh Khan.

Khan plays the adult Rizwan Khan, the aforementioned Indian Muslim with Aspergers, whose aim is to tell the President of the United States that his name is Khan, "and I am not a terrorist". This is explained to us via flashbacks related to the words he writes to/for a woman named Mandira (Kajol). In the film's first movement, Khan recounts growing up in Mumbai and the lesson from his ammi (mother) which is a reoccuring theme throughout the film - that in life, there are only good people who do good deeds, and bad people who do bad deeds, and that there are no other differences between people (a lesson taught to Khan in the aftermath of the Bombay Riots). That the young Rizwan (deftly performed by Tanay Chheda) has Aspergers isn't recognised by his loved ones at this point, but his talent for memorising historical dates and fixing machinery is already in evidence, as is the tension between him and younger bhai (brother) Zakir, who leaves for America under a cloud of jealousy at the supposedly inferior treatment towards him.

After the death of his beloved ammi, the adult Rizwan heads to San Francisco to live with Zakir (Jimmy Shergill), whose wife Haseena (Sonya Jehan) manages to get Rizwan's Aspergers diagnosed. Zakir finds Rizwan a job as a herbal beauty product salesman, and whilst out with his products, he's nearly being hit by a tram on a yellow crossing, which leads to him meeting Mandira, a Hindu woman with a son from a previous marriage. Here, the traditional Bollywood love story meets modern American indie cinema; thankfully, the necessary 'quirky' relationship is genuinely human and moving, with Khan and Kajol exhibiting a natural chemistry that they have always shown in previous pictures together, without being too heavy handed in dealing with some of the film's key themes and issues.

Just before the halfway point of the film, the events of 9/11 take place and turn the story upside down; anti-Muslim sentiment rear its ugly head, and two events occur which would leave you struggling to keep back the tears. Throughout the middle part of the film, Kajol is an emotional tour de force as Rizwan and Mandira's world spirals into despair via intolerance and a heartbreaking tragedy. Shibani Bathija's script is one of those where light breaks through the cracks and hope is never conquered, but the film's darker moments have the power suck the breath out of you as if you've been punched in the gut. For a film that's rated 12, it's fairly heavy stuff.

The scope of the film's topics - primarily the attitudes towards Muslims after 9/11, but also covering Aspergers, love, and an event which loosely resembles Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath - means that there is a lot to take in and the final part of the film occasionally lapses into fairly sentimental territory, but Johar does a very good job of pacing the film through each one of its 160 minutes, and never allows the film to be bogged down by the weight of the emotional baggage attached to each thread of the story. There must also be a special mention of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's brilliant score, which fuses traditional Bollywood and subtle Western flavours to magical effect. Like the film itself, it invites you to open up your heart and mind, and takes you on a quite magical journey where everything, like the film itself, isn't just black or white - it's HD technicolour which will stay with you long after the credits roll.

4.5/5

Film review: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds
A Quentin Tarrantino film starring Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent and Christoph Waltz

(May contain some spoilers)

It's 1941, and a group of German soldiers pull up at a French dairy farmer's house. The highest ranking German officer, who has earned the nickname 'The Jew Hunter', sits down with the owner of the house, and over the course of 20 minutes slowly breaks him down through measured, yet casual conversation, disarming charm and rhetoric, and after getting the farmer to reveal that he is hiding a Jewish family, old-fashioned brutality, SS-style. One young girl survives and runs away, as the officers shouts out "Au revoir, Shoshanna!"

Inglourious Basterds probably won't be topped by many films for Best Opening Scene of the year; it's one of those classic Tarrantino-esque encounters with a loose energy that slowly grows in tension until it reaches the end of its tether and is let go withsudden and shocking results. It's a key part of what made Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction instant '90s classics; stories weave in and out and peak as they finally come together, where the build-up was as brilliant constructed as the pay-offs. Inglourious Basterds continues in this tradition to (mostly) good effect, but on a ridiculously epic scale.

Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), and his gang of Basterds aim to spread fear amongst the German high command; Raine's charges are in debt to him, and in order to pay off the debt, each man must scalp 100 dead Nazis. The next scene sees them at work, killing all but one, who ends up with a Swastika carved into his head, forever marking him out as a Nazi, but spared his life in order to spread fear amongst the Germans. Of the Basterds, Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) is particularly feared, his exploits earning him the nickname 'The Bear Jew'. Pitt takes the role of Raine with relish; his indignant hillbilly disgust at the mere mention of Nazis helps him to steal most of the scenes he's in by sheer force. Roth's performance is more measured, whereas Til Schweiger's ever-seething Hugo Stiglitz is the unchained Basterd who excels in brooding and psycopathic violence.

The third chapter introduces us to a cinema owner in Paris, who is later revealed to be Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), who escaped from the Germans at the beginning of the film, and now runs the cinema under the alias Emmanuelle Mimeux. She comes into contact with German war hero Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), whose grand claim to fame is killing 300 American soldiers over three days in a bird's nest (sniper's position). Zoller falls for her, and asks Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to host the premiere of the propaganda film 'Nation's Pride' - featuring Zoller as himself - in her cinema. Zoller is possibly the weakest character in the film, taken from the mould of the average lovestruck supporting character, albeit with a crude arrogance and unbending allegiance to the Third Reich (the higher command are oddly in awe of Zoller; Goebbels is particularly taken with his young star) which makes him difficult to warm to, despite Brühl's best efforts.

From there, two plots to kill the Nazi high command emerge, both to take place at the film premiere. All of the actors are on good form, but special praise must go to Christoph Waltz as the horribly charismatic Standartenführer Hans Landa, aka 'The Jew Hunter'. Tarrantino has claimed that without the ability of Waltz, the film wouldn't be made, and whether he's turning on the charm in bi-lingual conversation or ruthlessly killing a German double agent in cold blood, Waltz's performance has Oscar-winner written all over it.

At over two-and-a-half hours, and with a lengthy supporting cast filling out each strand of the overall plot, the film's longer set pieces tends drag in places, before a swift blast of action kicks in to make sure you're still paying attention; witness the seemingly never-ending build-up - in reality, all of ten minutes - as Michael Fassbender, playing German-speaking Brit Lt. Archie Hicox, struggles to conceal his identity in a French tavern, before the scene explodes into action with a swift and bloody gunfight, and the body count goes up again.

Inglourious Basterds isn't going to be to everyone's liking, but once you get past the bloodshed and the revisionist history, and try and get your head around some of the plot lines and twists, it is well worth the mental, emotional, and financial investment. The decade or so that Tarrantino put into this film was definitely worth it; it's not quite a masterpiece, and doesn't sit easily in any recognisable genre, but it will be seen as a highlight of cinema in 2009.

4/5