Close your eyes and think of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. There’s a good chance that an image of a tall man with his arms wide open, looking up at the sky with a dreamy expression, just popped up.
Over the last two decades, Khan — often described as Bollywood’s king of romance — has regurgitated that signature move at every public function, or inserted it slyly into a majority of his films. But hasn’t it gotten cheesy? Khan turned 50 last month.
“It’s not cheesy or cliched… This is what I do for a living. The romance I show on the screen is extremely fantastical. You have to remember, the more popular the cinema, the more unbelievable it can get,” said Khan. He was at a press junket in Dubai on Saturday to promote his latest film Dilwale, out in the UAE on December 17. But his dreams weren’t always this utopian.
“I was a serious-minded actor when I started off in theatre and I have studied a lot of acting. I know it’s difficult to convince yourself that you have to walk atop a half-broken plane and do that step. But it’s like moving poetry,” he said. For effect, he recites a line from one of the movie’s songs, Gerua — Dhoop se nikhalke, chaav se fisalke, hum mile jahaa par, lamha tam gaya (coming out like the sunshine, or slipping like the shadow, wherever we met, the moment stopped there) — to prove his stand and points out that rainbows or gushing waterfalls make great props for romantic songs).
“I genuinely feel those are beautiful moments,” said Khan. His on-screen lover Kajol, however, had a different take.
“It was a bit cheesy and cliched, but we had such a great time. We were running around like weirdos to the monitor to see how good we looked. It was exciting and fun,” said Kajol.
Her last two words aptly sum up director Rohit Shetty’s brand of cinema.
His hits, such as the Bol Bachchan comic caper series, the mad comedy-of-errors Golmaal series and Chennai Express, the recent romantic comedy about a 40-year-old virgin, which starred Khan, aren’t meant to be taken too seriously. Catering to popular tastes, they are a heady mix of comedy, action and romance.
Dilwale, which is produced by Khan’s company, Red Chillies Entertainment, isn’t going to stray far from that successful formula. The actors are keeping the plot close to their chests. All we know is that there are two parallel love stories and that Khan plays a ‘car modifier’.
“I like what [Shetty] does. The first time I called him was after Golmaal 3. It was a wonderful film. Later, I bumped into him at Filmistaan [in Mumbai] and asked him to please do a film for me. He came up with Chennai Express. There’s no selling of script with Rohit. You form bonds with certain directors such as Karan [Johar], Adi [Aditya Chopra] and Farah [Khan]. Rohit is one of those guys to me,” Khan said.
Like most pop culture icons around the world, Khan surrounds himself with a handful of directors and actors that he has known and grown to trust. Shetty is the latest addition to his inner circle, while his friendship with Dilwale co-star Kajol dates back to 1993, when they acted in the thriller Baazigar. Their last film together was the terrorism drama My Name Is Khan in 2010.
“We started our careers together. 22 years later, you can still come and do something together means it will have its own special place. There’s no space for contempt here. We are both dignified in the way that we have treated each other. We have never crossed boundaries — emotions you know — and that’s what keeps us so well together. We know 99.9 per cent of each other’s lives and we say the right things to each other, because we feel the other person,” said Khan.
No political talk
It was clear during this interview that they had each other’s back. When this journalist probed Khan on his decision to refrain from commenting on political matters (“I am too articulate and therefore I shouldn’t speak about things I am not too articulate about,” said Khan), Kajol jumped to his defence.
“What he meant is that there’s a certain time and place for making a statement and this may not be just it. Film promotions is not that place,” said Kajol. For both, credibility is everything.
So how receptive would they be to accepting films that deviated from the mainstream? At the time of their visit, the 12th edition of the Dubai International Film Festival was taking place in the city.
“The only reason why you should do a film is that when you get up in the morning, you feel happy. Sometimes, a blockbuster would make me happy and sometimes an offbeat film would. For me, it’s not about Rs300 crore [Rs3 billion, Dh164 million] or Rs30 crore that a film makes. At this stage and age, it doesn’t matter,” said Khan, adding that he has experimented with a string of films such as the period romance Ashoka, sports drama Chak De! India and the romance Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa.
“But an indie filmmaker also needs to have credibility and credentials … Every actor wants to do something different, but I would never mislead any actor and say: ‘do what your heart dictates and go live your life [a famous line from his own film Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge]’, because suddenly you will find that you have no work, but three awards.
“For an actor, the worst thing is not having enough work. You can get rusty,” said Khan. On the other end of the podium, young actors Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon — who feature in Dilwale — were hanging on to his every word. In Dilwale, the younger pair represent today’s generation of lovers, while Kajol and Khan’s love story will be grand and angst-ridden.
“Shah Rukh sir makes sure that he charms and relaxes us. He makes us feel as if you are on par with him. It’s an amazing ability,” said Dhawan, in a separate interview. Fresh from the success of his bloody revenge drama Badlapur, the son of filmmaker David Dhawan claims that acting in Bollywood mainstream, a.k.a ‘masala’, films comes with its own set of challenges.
“Many scenes in such films may not be logical, but it’s the hero’s ability to make you believe or disbelieve … If people think that doing arthouse cinema is tough and different, then try jumping off trees. At the end of the day, there are some people who save up for a month to watch a film. At that time, they want to feel happy in those two and half hours in the cinemas,” Dhawan said.
Perhaps, this reasoning explains the glut of feel-good and grand, escapist films that inundate Bollywood every year. On the day that Dilwale releases, director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s epic romance Bajirao Mastani will also be rolled out. But Khan and his team aren’t worried.
“It’s unfortunate but we make 200 films a year and they are likely to clash. In south [India], during the same weekend, two big south Indian films are coming up. Here, there’s Star Wars. So business may get a bit diverted and divided,” said Khan.
While he detests reducing and slotting his films into the deified Rs3 billion clubs, he warns viewers not to expect another Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge or Kuch Kuch Hota Hai from Dilwale. Khan was alluding to his biggest romances with Kajol in the past.
“Dilwale is more a family film than a love story of two young people who fall in love during a train journey... [Dilwale] is about relationships that transcend time. Kajol and I can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again,” said Khan.
His young son AbRam has already given him his thumbs-up, a move that seems to have significantly boosted Khan’s morale. AbRam is Khan’s two-year-old son.
“He didn’t sleep through it all. His eyes were wide awake and glued to the screen.”
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“Fun, hectic and I hope it’s triumphant this month,” said Kajol when asked how 2015 had treated her.
“The passion and energy that he has when he comes on sets. If I can have that, a few years from now, that would be great. I love Kajol ma’am’s spontaneity. She can surprise us,” said Kriti Sanon on what she learnt from Khan and Kajol.
