Saturday, December 20, 2014
PK
Whose God Is It Anyway?
The subject is terribly
pertinent, considering the madness being unleashed in the world, in the name of
religion. Rajkumar Hirani’s PK could have got his and his star Aamir
Khan’s captive audiences to start thinking about the religious mafia, the way Lage Raho Munnabhai got the nation hooked to Gandhigiri. If it falls short, it’s because a great film was expected
from Hirani, otherwise, it’s entertaining at least two-thirds of the way.
With points borrowed from ET, K-Pax and Oh My God, Hirani fashions
a funny and colourful film about an alien who lands on earth and has the
‘remote’ that connects him to his spaceship stolen.
He figures out human traits on
the way, though he cannot understand the language. He steals clothes and money
from “dancing cars” (with couples making out in the backseat)... in a funny
scene he figures out that a Gandhi photo can get him food, and tries to barter
Gandhi posters with the vegetable vendor, till it dawns on him that the photo
has to be on a currency note for it to work.
A Rajasthani performer Bhairon
Singh (Sanjay Dutt) helps PK, believing he has lost his memory, after being
knocked down by his truck. To understand human speech, he needs to hold the
hand of a person for a long time – no man lets him touch, and trying to grab
the hand of various women gets him into trouble. Finally he gets “cooperation”
from a hooker and so ends up speaks his pungent dialogue in Bhojpuri. (Later,
he is seen writing a note in English, but in a Hindi movie, sab chalta hai).
When he hunts for his remote,
he is told only God can help him, so he goes in search of God—the best part of
the film is here, when he stumbles from one religious edifice to another, but
cannot comprehend the concept of religion and the various rituals associated
with it. Everybody he questions, with perfect logic, brushes him aside with
a “Peekay
ho kya,” (Are you drunk?), so he acquires the name PK.
He tells all this to TV
reporter Jagat Janani aka Jaggu (Anushka Sharma), who promises to help him find
his remote. The fact that she has a man from another planet living under her
roof is not a scoop, a battle with a fraud (such a cliché) godman (Saurabh
Shukla) is, because he has come upon PK’s remote and is pretending it’s a
religious symbol that demands the construction of a temple. PK’s child-like
questions and his quest for God is humorous even if the observations are
simplistic. The fact is that everyone uses platitudes like ‘God is one and all
religions are the same’ even when the tiniest perceived slight to their faith
pushes people to violence.
Aamir Khan, with his odd
bug-eyed, bat-eared look, does make PK a delightfully goofy character, and
expectedly dominates the film. The TV reporter has become a bit of a stock
character in films, and the entire media portion is half-baked; still, Anushka
Sharma does the best she can with the role.
PK is worth a watch, and has
Hirani’s signature blend of message wrapped in an entertaining package, but
still, it leaves one with just a small twinge of disappointment. Lage Raho Munnabhai also used fantasy,
but it was so well scripted that there was a perfectly plausible explanation
for Munna’s encounters with Gandhi. Because PK
is literally an alien, there is no room to manoeuvre there, and after a while
the charm of the plot fails and Hirani paints himself into a corner when it
comes to taking the story and the religious debate to a strong conclusion. The
ending is weak and contrived (a TV debate of all things!) but the audience has
perhaps got its share of laughs till then, and PK’s words of wisdom, so the
film’s success is never in question.
Labels: Cinemaah
