Thoughts About FAN

Statutory Warning: This review contains spoilers. In order not to spoil your movie experience, it is advisable to read this piece only after having watched the movie. However, it should also be noted that there is (obviously) no compulsion. So suit yourselves. Make yourselves at home, everyone.

Statutory Warning 2: I am writing this piece as a fan of cinema, as someone who loves stories and storytellers. I am neither writing it as fan of an actor, or as an expert critic (why, I am glad I am not one anyway.) It would therefore be better not to bother with what’s written ahead if you’re reading it just to find praises about an actor, or, if you’ve already decided you don’t like the movie without even watching it, and are here just to read the flaws in the movie so you could blow them up while pretending you’ve watched the movie yourself. For everyone else in the grey zone, dive in!

It isn’t too often that you leave the cinema hall speechless. Not because you have been left spellbound, or because the movie is the best you have ever seen. No. All those aforementioned things happen often, if not too often. But FAN makes you leave the hall speechless because you have no idea how you feel about the characters in the movie. You are clueless about how you would’ve wanted it to end. You aren’t sure whether what happened was right or wrong, or whether it was the only possible way to set things right or not.

And that’s the beauty of FAN. It lets you decide. It lets you choose. Choose between an over-obsessed disciple and a righteous self-made God (of the disciple.) It doesn’t decide how you should feel about a particular character. It just tells a story. It lets you pick out your own lesson. Yes, the lesson learnt is by the hard way, and yes, the lesson learnt requires you to sit through a film that could have been shorter by a few minutes, or writing that could have been crispier, but it is a step. It is offering you something that’s worth those bucks you’re paying, and that alone is a reason for you to invest your time in this movie.

FAN is like a literary novel. Not that it’s a classic or unparalleled or a masterpiece. I’m pointing out the similarities between the two on the basis of how the story is plotted. Literary novels spend half the words, half the book, in setting up the story. The first half of FAN is about setting up the story. Maneesh Sharma allots an hour of the film to let you inside the world of Gaurav, his ‘Dilli wala launda’ lifestyle, his obsession, his dreams, his beliefs and his small world that he feels is in turn a part of this bigger world, that of Aryan.

Gaurav’s performance in the Super Sitara contest is a really complex scene. He pretends to do all those things that Aryan is shown doing on a screen behind him. He is so blinded by his passion that he doesn’t care about hurting himself in the process. When you think about it though, you realize how precarious it is. Gaurav is looking for a sense of achievement by being Junior Aryan. He is merrily ready to lose his sense of identity to be called a shadow of someone else. This is why Aryan’s words in the climax, that Gaurav should become a person of his own, have so much more impact.

The action sequence in the first half, where Gaurav tries to run away from the chasing cops, seems pointless initially. How would someone be so stupid that he’ll attempt running away from cops, risking his life in the process, even though he knows he is trapped and will be hunted down eventually? But it’s just a part of setting up Gaurav’s character. The scene underlines how true the stunts in Aryan’s movies are to Gaurav. Like the fight he picks up in the cyber café initially. He believes that he can do all that Aryan can do on celluloid. Or at least try to do. He has a point to prove there. That he is so big a fan, that he has learnt these skills solely from Aryan’s movies. That he has learnt standing up to the bad guys from Aryan’s movies.

The sequences after Aryan visits Gaurav in the prison are brilliant. They radiate technical excellence, as well as highlight the acting and storytelling. The two days that Gaurav spends in the cell have been allotted ample amount of screen time. There are a lot of shots from a lot of angles that may seem unnecessary. But all of that is more than necessary. Gaurav, whose entire world was built around Aryan, is still processing the events that have just happened. He is lost in contemplating whether all of this is real.

The tearing down of posters from the wall and their incineration symbolize Gaurav’s acceptance of the fact that his world has tumbled down. He could’ve hated Aryan and told everyone else what had happened and gone ahead with his life hating Aryan. But he decides to go for revenge. He spends months, plotting and coming up with a plan, and even gives up on his only source of livelihood just to teach Aryan a lesson. That a fan makes a star, and hence can break him too. Which in turn shows us his obsession with the star-fan relationship, and with Aryan. In all his hatred and revenge plan, Gaurav is still looking for a redemption in the form of an apology. He still hasn’t realized the pointlessness of being obsessed with a star, and sadly, he never does.

Though it seems far-fetched that Gaurav can move through so many disguises with such subtlety, the plot does keep you at the edge of your seats. The action is clinical, the sound adds to every ounce of thrill, and the movie seems to be made by a team of technicians who are Straight Outta Hollywood. The camera work in the prison scene is delightful. The difference in lights in the prison scenes of Gaurav in the first half and Aryan in the second half are remarkable. The chase scenes are as good as any other action film would offer.

The real soul of the film, however, is Shah Rukh Khan. Shah Rukh’s Gaurav feels so real that you forget he is being played by the same actor who’s playing Aryan. His accent, his voice, his mannerisms, his expressions—it is almost as if Maneesh and Shah Rukh have created this real, living entity. It is heart-breaking now to think of the fact that Gaurav is just a work of fiction. Both Maneesh and Shah have to be applauded for their efforts that make people feel for Gaurav despite his antagonism.

When I saw the trailer, I was apprehensive about the film. I thought there were inconsistencies in the VFX, and Gaurav’s face looked different at different times. But the film made me applaud the efforts the VFX team has taken. It is so difficult to point out inconsistencies. The makeup team deserves all the praises for their excellence. The scenes where Gaurav disguises as Aryan are so believable. You are forced to believe, at least for a moment, that the guy entering Madame Tussaud’s is Aryan, and not his fan.

In his successful portrayal of a seemingly impossible character of Gaurav, fewer people have noticed what Shah Rukh has done as Aryan. We have already seen him play a superstar in films like Billu and Om Shanti Om, but these characters had traces of Shah Rukh. Aryan isn’t Shah Rukh. Aryan is a superstar—self-made, righteous, egotistical, aging—and Shah portrays him onscreen without leaving a trace of his real self. He makes us believe there exists a superstar who even though has a journey and lifestyle similar to him, is someone completely different. How difficult is that and how subtly has he done it!

The halves are completely different in tones, though. The first is a bit light—foreshadowing the darkness, but still peppered with subtle situational humour or seemingly adorable drama. The latter half is dark, edgy, packed with adrenaline almost the entire time. The point isn’t which half is better. The point is that both the halves, however good, are completely different, and Maneesh fails in moulding them together in a coherent whole.

Despite his shortcomings, Maneesh should be applauded for what he has done. He stood by his dream for a decade, shaped up a film that might have looked impossible at one point in time, took up the seemingly impossible task of making a film with Shah Rukh that doesn’t have Shah Rukh-esque elements—dance, songs, romance, believed in his completely unconventional film, and displayed a side of Shah Rukh that people had forgotten. Performance wise, FAN sits in the league of KHKN, Swades, Chak De and MNIK, for SRK, and it would be unfair not to credit Maneesh for that.

The film has quite some memorable scenes, but some scenes stay with us for some time. The one where Aryan is warning the press about Gaurav and is about to say “Whatever I am, I am thanks to my fans.” His expression mid-sentence shows us that he now realizes how shallow and ironic that sentence sounds. The one where Aryan is getting ready for the show in London, and he is checking his face. Maybe he was thinking about how people recognize you by the face you have, and not the way you have been behaving hitherto. Maybe he was thinking about his face having started aging, and him having to lose all that he has. We’ll never know. All that we’ll know is that we saw a superstar’s face—the real one—his fear, his insecurity, and how ironic it was to be enacted by someone who is believed to be extremely secure. The one when he faces an empty stadium is beautiful. Aryan’s eyes depict that feeling of loss, despair and hopelessness and it feels real than your own breath. The most memorable one is obviously the end—where Aryan is waving to his fans, and his expression changes as he sees Gaurav: so many feelings, so many emotions are conveyed in a few seconds, and it’s haunting despite seeming to be peaceful. Like the smile on Gaurav’s face when he falls. He isn’t sorry for what happened. He is just happy that he did what he wanted to: make Aryan realize what a fan is.

Gaurav is obsessed with getting an apology from Aryan—the second half being entirely about his desperate attempts to make Aryan say “Sorry” and Aryan being adamant on not apologizing because he hasn’t done anything wrong and the audience wanting or not wanting Aryan to say Sorry—Gaurav’s attempts never feel futile. He does get his Sorry after all: through Aryan’s eyes when he waves at the fans on his birthday.

PS: This is not a review. (It rather feels like a report.) These are just my thoughts about the movie (after having discussed it for three days with numerous people) In fact, at about more than 1900 words, review is the last thing this piece can be. It would be selfish to end this six page long report without thanking you for reading throughout. For those who stopped midway, well, “Rehn do. Woh nahi samjhenge.”