Satyam’s piece on PK

thanks to all those who expressed an interest in this piece but especially Rajen who made sure I produced it! I am therefore keeping the title he chose for this post


I initially thought of writing a different sort of piece on this film. More of a ‘review’. But I think this film might be better served by not being submitted to such ‘standard’ treatment. In any case this kind of exercise does not interest me very much at this point. Some of the controversy this film has generated (rather late in the day!) could also justify a polemical essay. But this too is not my aim here even if I am never less than this on just about any subject. This is partly a strategic decision because this isn’t the sort of work that asks to be placed on one side or the other in such over-determined ideological battles. In fact, Hirani’s characteristically fluid narrative is gently subversive throughout, sometimes even deceptively so, but it is never in the business of making a more profound statement on its subject, and hence to use this film as an example to pick up larger ideological cudgels is hasty and this on either side of the equation.

Something about PK lingers in the mind. I cannot argue that on pure narrative grounds Hirani is any less successful here than in his previous outings but relative to the possibilities of the subject it is disappointing that he chose not to take his wry commentary and even more generally his remarkable skills as a storyteller further. In other words PK is a much more interesting subject than any of its predecessors in the director’s work but it is also the least fully-realized. The difficulty here is that even conceding this one is left with a very good film that is still miles ahead of most of the competition in most contemporary years. And even with what I consider problematic in the film in important ways I still like it more than 3 Idiots. I couldn’t state the same with respect to the Munnabhai films but PK does not necessarily interest me less than those two.

Hirani’s first half more or less does everything right. Some of his most inspired comic sequences also occur in this portion of the film. I am thinking especially of the sequences that involve PK’s first appearance at the temple and then later the Shiva street-theater episode. It is also a half that promises greater things. One knows there will be a crisis somewhere in the story and one eagerly waits for it as one gets through this superbly entertaining half that admittedly takes a bit of time to truly get off the ground. Even more successful than the half is Aamir Khan in possibly the role of a career, at least if one were to correlate his skills, even essence as a star-actor with the results he’s achieved so far. I have liked him almost everywhere in this ‘later’ stage of his career, his sincerity has convinced more often than not but in PK he finds a comic space and a quirky resonance that are especially keyed to his acting instincts. More than anywhere else in Hirani the film depends on the plausibility of the central character and even when the format becomes less inspired at points Aamir more or less pulls it through.

Despite everything being in place Hirani disappoints with the story’s central crisis. It is in a sense too tame. The film begs for greater heights. This does not mean that it ought to have become a different sort of work. To an extent this criticism could be extended towards each of the director’s previous films. One might think of this as the ‘Hrishikesh Mukherjee problem’. Much as I admire the gentle subversions of each the strongest works of each director are still largely exercises in brilliant comedy fully integrated with narrative and punctuated occasionally with sharp commentary as opposed to films that are ever likely to push further in the direction of something edgier. My point here is not to be unfair to Hirani much less the redoubtable Hrishikesh Mukherjee but to highlight that such expectations are generated precisely within the frames these directors create. Interesting as these works are they could be much more so. Certainly in PK where although the second half is still very absorbing, even surprising at a key moment, and where the resolution is nonetheless involving, it is also in a way flattens out the greater energy of the first portion. The first Munnabhai was a relatively modest affair that unexpectedly became about ‘clinicality’ (in a sense the comatose patient here is fused with the Munnabhai character to create PK..). The second installment then went more epic with the Gandhian ghost-delusion imparting a certain ambiguity to the film’s commentary. Finally, an ultimate ‘New Indian’ campus comedy where the hero is as much of a misfit as the earlier gangster and who eventually succeeds by keeping himself outside the fold (literal geographical alienation here!) of this aspirational economy. The film is even structured as a journey toward that liminal space. So even as these films too were not ambitious attempts at socio-political commentary Hirani often upgraded them in provocative ways. In PK pretty much the same happens in the first half but the second one settles down into much easier terrain. I might have conceded that Hirani had largely exhausted his format except for the fact that he had his richest subject (so far) in PK. Once again the difficulty lies in making this point even as one also allows the seemingly contradictory one that the second half is by any other standard a very engaging, wholly satisfying one.

But PK isn’t an ‘anti-Hindu’ film by any stretch. It is not even especially concerned with religion as such much less launching invectives against the same. The film really concerns itself with religiosity in the most universal sense. Perhaps even more than this it is about the madly commercial dimensions the same acquires in a totally consumerist age. If anything ‘faith’ itself emerges completely untouched from the film (as it did in the considerably less interesting Oh My God before it). A deeper work would perhaps explore how the dividing line between the notion of a pure faith and its ‘hyper’ manifestations in religiosity is not an easy one to conceive of or certainly police. This is why the audience is always left in a comfortable space in such an exercise. It is true that PK after briefly touching upon all major Indian denominations in both halves really busies itself with ‘Hinduism’. But this is again only incidentally inasmuch as the latter is the site of majoritarian belief in India and hence more far-reaching in its consequences (one might critique Evangelical Christianity in an American context or the various Islamisms in different parts of the world). To connect this point with my larger argument I’d reiterate that at certain moments in PK there are glimpses of that deeper provocation but Hirani is instinctively not suited for this sharper polemical sting, at least not in sustained fashion. And PK with all its considerable strengths and valiant aims suffers more for this reason than anything else in the director’s oeuvre. But it is still a film to be applauded. The director’s and the lead star’s careers are still rendered more interesting for this collaboration, not less.

** I should add an an aside (because I couldn’t fit this point into the piece) that the whole Pakistani angle seemed a bit forced in the film and even if it made for an effective climax was also a bit more mechanical in this sense.