SUCH A GOOD MOVIE!!!! So glad I took time off work to see it, TOTALLY worth it, and I was so swept away I even forgot to feel guilty for skipping work!
The plot is really fun, and whacky, and I can’t talk about anything without spoiling something. So be warned, this review is gonna be very basic. While also still trying to convey why you SHOULD ALL GO SEE IT.
I spent a lot of time watching it thinking about Elizabeth Taylor. Elizabeth Taylor in her later years became a huge advocate for gay rights, specifically related to the AIDs epidemic and lack of resources. She had always been aware of and involved to some degree with gay rights, she had very close closeted friends and she talked about how much she loved them and hurt for them. But I don’t think she became involved with the AIDs issues because of her personal connection. I think it was because she was an enormously empathetic person, and she was a public figure who had followers from all parts of society, and in this particular moment the part of society that most needed a champion, that most cried out for empathy, was the gay community in America.
And that’s where I feel Shahrukh is coming from in his violent feminism in this movie. I don’t actually think Shahrukh cares more for young women and their struggles than for children, or young men, or the elderly. But in this time and place, that particular group is crying out for a champion and so he will step into that role.
This is very much a Shahrukh Khan Film. It’s all to his greater glory, for sure. But he is using that glory to shed a light on problems of society, all kinds of problems, and in particular how they effect the overlooked and forgotten young women of modern India.
That’s what makes it work, as a film. Great action scenes, great performances (Dips is onscreen for maybe 15 minutes total and conveyed more emotion than any other actress, just phenomenal), good songs, good villain (Not great, I kind of want to see the Tamil version because I suspect Vijay Sethupathi will be better in his own language), and very twisty plot. But Pathaan had all of that too and it just didn’t hit as hard. What makes this hit is the foundational idea, making the invisible woman into the person who matters most. Whether she is the prison guard, or the college student on the train, or the wife threatened to scare her husband, or even the love interest of the hero. They DO things, they MATTER. And what happens to them matters to, it happens to THEM, not just to the men around them.
So yes, Shahrukh of Chak De, of Dear Zindagi, with the heroine of One 2 Ka 4, and the villains of Oh Darling Yeh Hai India.
