Saturday, April 16, 2016
Fan
SRK vs SRK
If the weird idea of Maneesh Sharma’s Fan sounds
like something out of a Stephen King novel, it’s probably because the gist
about an obsessive fan comes from Misery. Also, Tony Scott's film, the Fan. However, the film
has used the ingenious device of making Shah Rukh Khan play his fan, and pay
tribute to his own great stardom.
In the film, 25-year-old Gaurav (SRK
who is made to look like himself as he was when had just started his career) is
a crazy fan of the star Aryan Khanna (SRK—as he is now). He makes use of
the resemblance to win a star lookalike contest—egged on by his adoring
parents—and hopes to meet the star on his birthday and gift him his trophy. He
copies the star’s journey to Mumbai, deliberately travelling without ticket and
staying in the same room in the same decrepit hotel as Aryan had when he first
came to the city.
It’s strange that Gaurav’s resemblance to
Aryan is used when it suits the script and ignored when it doesn’t. In the
train, hotel, or when he is with a crowd of other screaming fan outside the
star’s bungalow, nobody notices. Gaurav’s scheme to meet his ‘god’ ends
badly. Probably used to intrusive admirers, Aryan refuses to acknowledge the
intensity of Gaurav’s love for him and treats him with cool indifference (“Why
should I spare even five minutes for you?”)
Stung, Gaurav acquires the resources and
cunning to follow the star abroad and mount an insidious attack on the star’s
reputation, using that resemblance. During these episodes, everybody
simply believes that Gaurav is Aryan, because that’s the only way to make the
fan’s plan work—and all he wants is an apology.
As this vengeful Gaurav, Shah Rukh Khan
channels his own youthful avatar in films like Baazigar and Darr,
The scenes are not too convincing, but they lead to the inevitable showdown.
Khan plays the star with a kind of weary resignation, so his real challenge is
to make Gaurav likeable, devious and tragic at the same time, and he does that
brilliantly. Shah Rukh Khan does not
need to prove that he still has a true actor’s fire in his belly, but Fan does that anyway, even if that means
no other actor in the film has much to do.
Labels: Cinemaah
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