Pathaan: A Love Story Masquerading As An Action Film
This Valentine’s Day, in the spirit of fostering Hindu-Muslim ekta/unity, one of HfHR’s political cornerstones, we share our reflection on Pathaan and its roaring success at box offices worldwide.
A non-review appreciation of Pathaan By Padmini Gamzeh
That Pathaan is Shah Rukh Khan’s love letter to his fans is clear from the many critical reviews, think pieces, video analyses and memes. On the surface, Pathan is a mediocre film with a wafer thin plot and high octane action sequences across the dizzying skyscrapers of Dubai,chic Parisian cafes, the stunning frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia and baroque Spanish architecture in Mallorca. The NY Times review aptly called the film a rolling out of a “flaming dessert cart of chugging guns, midair melees and ceaseless showdowns.”
The film works, as well as fails, in bursts and spurts, for invoking themes and political subtext drawing from recent events. SRK’s studied silence in the last few years against a mainstreaming of anti-Muslim sentiments by the current government, the abrogation of Section 370 on Kashmir; the old rehashing of Indo-Pak rivalry through the love story of the protagonists Deepika Padukone and SRK, all reek of a case of old wine in a new bottle. Except that, at the same time, the bottle is smashed, and SRK gives everything his charismatic, dazzling, Sufi-esque spin.
Indeed, SRK even throws in some philosophical richness to the film. His character invokes the Japanese art form of Kintsugi as a new hobby. Upholding a broken piece of pottery held together by molten gold is a metaphor for Pathaan’s own broken but unfazed, mending spirit. SRK’s endurance and dignified silence, letting his art speak for him, makes the beautiful art come alive for the whole movie; the sum of its broken parts come together to make a precious, pieced together whole. And if that doesn’t work for you, then, well you at least walk away knowing about the poetic hobby of Kintsugi!
But it took SRK introducing the film’s three main protagonists at a post-release celebration of the movie breaking multiple box office records, as “Amar, Akbar and Anthony,” for me to have my aha moment about Pathaan: The film works not just as a purely hedonistic experience of SRK, for his fans, the masses who throng everyday outside his beach-facing house in Mumbai as well as the middle class elite.It also lifts up the nostalgia of an imagined Hindu-Muslim unity. Of ideals enshrined in the secular spirit of our constitution - a spirit that is not just being chipped away, but literally hacked away today, in the name of making India a Hindu rashtra/nation.
Much digital ink has been spilt analysing the film’s overwhelming success; it has smashed multiple records and is currently one of the biggest hits in recent decades. Film experts call it a modern day revival of the Muslim social. News commentators and cultural critics alike hail the film as SRK’s middle finger to the current political regime that has targeted him in recent years for being a hugely successful global phenomenon. Trade journalists find its action hero formula worked with the masses.
Actor John Abraham, who plays the gorgeous villain, Jim, said of its lead actor at a press conference celebrating the film’s unprecedented success, “Shah Rukh Khan is not just an actor, but an emotion!” And it's an overwhelming, ludicrous love for SRK that seems to be driving box office sales. That tickets to the film were sold out for days ahead even before its release is testament to his unparalleled star power.
Early teasers of the film had SRK announcing in a flight stewardly manner, “Fasten your seat belts, the weather is about to get bad,” but if the endless ringing of the box office register is any sign, it is definitely fair weather time again for the Badshah of Bollywood.
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