Raj and Rahul Malhotras are passé.

What began with Kabir Khan in Chak De India has now concluded with the eponymous Rizvan Khan in My Name is Khan; Shahrukh Khan’s metamorphosis from an entertainer to an actor is now decisively complete.

He’s delivered a performance that has depth and latitude, something his critics claimed he lacks.  

On to the film, My Name is Khan is a perhaps a better film amongst many that have hit the screens lately. It’s certainly better than Fanaa, New York and Kurbaan – all very feeble and lifeless attempts to tell stories that unfold under the dark shadow of 9/11.

In Kurbaan, Riyaz, the character played by Vivek Oberoi, doesn’t really think much before pulling the trigger on the restaurant attendant he’s been ordered to bump off. A seemingly rational and well integrated American, Riyaz goes ahead with the hit in order to demonstrably prove his loyalty to the gang he’s vowed to bring down.

He feels queasy afterwards alright, but he seemingly does it without much going in his head. Now, here’s a character - who declared, earlier in the film, that he’s an American first and a Muslim later - embracing the same kind of wanton violence that he seemed to disapprove.

How’s his character different from that of Saif Ali Khan’s Ahsan who’s shown to be a hardboiled agent of terror? Ahsan seeks vengeance for his wife and child, and Riyaz for his girlfriend, and neither of them is averse to killing innocent people. Who then is a ‘Moderate Muslim’ amongst the two?

I call My Name is Khan a better film because it’s neither an apology nor an indictment. It’s got its beating heart in the right place. Though, it hasn’t yet got the politics right as its protagonist Rizvan Khan is not an ordinary mortal.

I mean, it is as if Karan Johar is implying that Riyaz cracked and Rizvan didn’t only because Rizvan has been bestowed with certain special superpowers, one of them being is his resolve to not give in to the madness around him. He can pull off the extraordinary.

Could Rizvan have turned sour and angry after all the injustices meted out to him? I don’t think so. He’s incapable of going that route.    
 
My Name is Khan is the story of Rizwan Khan who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, which is, to put it simply, a mild form of autism. He’s a bit clumsy and faces difficulties relating with people around him. But as he puts it…he ‘is intelligent’. 

The young Rizvan grows up in suburban Mumbai absorbing lessons in goodness and compassion given by his doting mother – played superbly by Zarina Wahaab. After her death Rizvan moves to the US to join his estranged brother Zakir (Jimmy Shergill) and work with him.

There he meets, falls in love and marries single mom Mandira (Kajol) and seems to have fulfilled the promise he made to his mother that he’ll be happy. Much in love, Rizvan and Mandira build a cheerful world along with Mandira’s son Sameer.

Soon enough and predictably, their world is rocked by the World Trade Centre attacks and their aftershocks; and there begins Rizvan’s rather eventful journey across the country to deliver a special message to the president elect.  

The film flows well until this point and one gears up for a promising second half. But the director has other plans. He twists the story – otherwise progressing nicely- in the way only a Bollywood director can, taking it from the realm of belief to that of disbelief.

The stunning sequences that help the narrative build up to this crest- like where Mandira gives Rizvan a haircut and where they both explore the city of San Francisco together- go for a toss.

But then it’s not just anyone directing the film. Karan Johar packs in enough drama in the remaining part of the film that we, suckers for his brand of filmmaking, remain glued to it.

The climax comes across as long, contrived and over-the-top, but once you’ve suspended your critical faculties it all seems plausible and in some way even defiantly entertaining.

The trio- Karan Johar, Shahrukh Khan and Kajol – is perhaps our collective guilty pleasure and we’re willing and happy to just look at the larger picture (at the peril of overlooking the details. One that I couldn’t overlook was, Rizvan and Mandira’s son, Sameer’s death.

Was the attack racially motivated or just a gruesome aspect of the American school culture? If it was the latter, then it wasn’t quite a turning point, no?)  

But the film works for me everything put together. Some stuff was really brilliant. Like, the three pebbles Rizvan keeps turning in his hand and how he puts them to good use later in the film.

Not-so-famous Urdu poet Meeraji, who lead a bohemian life, was once caught by Saadat Hasan Manto with three small balls.

His reasons for carrying them escape me as of now, but Rizvan’s reasons are quite laudable! I also loved the way how the city of San Francisco forms an integral part of the narrative (like Mumbai did in another Dharma Production Wake up Sid?). Rizvan, however incapable of expressing his emotions, does so well when it comes to remembering his son and friend Sameer.

He walks around the country wearing his soccer shoes (again perhaps a trick from the Dharma Production’s direction hand book; Sid slips into Aisha’s favourite shirt after they’ve drifted apart) and talks about him in a memorial service as Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo do in Buenos Aires, Argentina do to remember their children disappeared under the military dictatorship; all in a hope to reunite with their lost children one day.

(There’re lot of references woven into the film, both intended and unintended, and one must watch out for them, like the character of Mama Jane. The real Mama Jane was accused of witch craft and cast out of her community by one of the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s supporter.)

The shot taking is superb and the narrative derives much of its strength from images themselves. Being a Dharma production it’s got scale and superb production value. Soundtrack, which is already a hit, is also weaved in quite seamlessly.

The background score though is overly dramatic at times. A special mention must be here made for the supporting cast; Arif Zakaria, Vinay Pathak, SM Zaheer et al. They’re all cast well and turn in good performances.  

It’s a film that you’d like to watch. If not for its message, then only because it’s entertaining. If not for its shortcomings, then only for SRK. If not for SRK, then perhaps for Shiv Sena.