What is Wrong with Shahrukh Khan?

From the business point of view ‘a mixed report’ on the opening weekend of a new film is not good news, because it means that for every group of filmgoers who’ve responded positively, there are groups of filmgoers on the other side – the ones who’ve not liked the film.

It is also accepted in film trade circles that for a big film ‘a mixed report’ is not the best of things. Big-budget productions need to turn in big profits to justify the big investment made. A mixed report from the audience signals uncertain profit percentages, and the investors have to work to “exploit” the film’s market potential; rather than see the film sell on its own charisma. A mixed report also implies, as a young colleague reminds me, that the film’s repeat-value could well be limited.

It looks as if our superstar of the day is being afflicted by the ‘mixed report’ infection. Of Shah Rukh Khan’s last three films, two opened to mixed reports from the audience - ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’ and ‘Devdas’. Therefore one is tempted to ask: What’s going wrong with the superstar?

As an old time film-addict, I fear that the problem begins with the new Shah Rukh Khan image that we now see. Both ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’ and ‘Devdas’ were designed not for an actor designated to play a certain characterization, but for a superstar; a guy filmgoers are not supposed to identity with but to revere.

This is in sharp contrast to the non-conformist, intense and edgy Shah Rukh we had come to love in ‘Deewana’, ‘Baazigar’, ‘Darr’, even ‘Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman’ - the fizz and irrepressibility of an actor devouring the screen with its nervous energy. Thanks to the transmogrification of Shah Rukh’s screen-image, that intensity is now completely missing from his screen presence. Instead, he is personified as an omniscient superstar. One who is so clever and smart that he will never have to fight with his back against the wall in the film.

In ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’ the hierarchical status of the film studio has been rudely transfixed upon the hierarchy of the film: the superstar has to come first in every filmic situation! The actor, too, prefers this new look. His appearance is now often complacent and smug; suggesting that his mere presence on the screen could get away with any kind of filmic sleight of hand, even when it feigns to present mundane dialogue-lines as wit and repartee.

In Shah Rukh’s close-ups in the recent films, his ‘portraits’ are presented with the unreal mien of ‘perfection’ that models are given by dress designers and make-up artists, in order to impose the cinema’s most delusive myth: the superstar is a human being! What it does, however, is to alienate filmgoers (or many of us, at least) from the actor. He looks too perfect and flawless to be good enough for somebody like us to identify with. Filmgoers secretly want ‘one of us’ to be a superstar on the magic screen, not an unreal visage cosmeticized by dress designers, make-up artists, scriptwriters and film directors.

It is time for Shah Rukh Khan to do a quick re-think and stop playing the Superstar of the film studios on the silverscreen. Time, indeed, for him to transform himself once again into an actor who is one with the masses.