A masterpiece from Bollywood: PK
Film Review
For people around my age, the Indian film industry was Raj Kapoor and Awara. I remember watching this film from 1951 in a small cinema in the 60s Beyoğlu (Istanbul) famous for its cinemas. I had liked it as a child due to its melodramatic narrative similar to 60s Turkish cinema and the songs and dances that ornamented it, I think.
In later years Indian films did not attract my attention that much. Many of the films about India, such as Gandhi or Slumdog Millionaire were actually shot by foreign directors.
For me, PK stopped a long drought of Indian films and was an interesting example highlighting today’s Bollywood.
In this film, directed by Rajkumar Hirani, the leading parts are played by one of the most famous Indian male stars, Aamir Khan, and Anushka Sharma, a relatively new star actress.
The first part of the film takes place in Bruges in Belgium. Indian girl student Jaggat is trying to find a ticket for a concert when she meets the Pakistani Sarfaraz. After they get over the initial bias, they try to have a good time together and she notices that she has fallen in love with him.
When having a video call with her family her dad learns about this and consults a family friend, the reverend Tapasvi for help. Tapasvi, who everyone trusts for his predictions, states that the Pakistani boy is going to cheat her and as such she should terminate this relation immediately. Jaggat is sick all of these and asks Sarfaraz to get married. They book the next day at the church to get married. While waiting for Sarfaraz at the church, she gets a letter from him stating that the marriage will not go ahead, she is very much disappointed and returns to India to start working as a reporter on a TV channel.
We then see a spaceship landing on a desert-like place in the Rajasthan state of India and leaving behind a naked man wearing a medallion with blinking lights (A reference to Terminator?). Our spaceman tries to understand earthlings, learns to speak and as expected crosses paths with Jaggat. Jaggat wants to learn the story of this eccentric and obviously mad (?) man with a journalistic instinct. The film starts its rollercoaster narrative after this point on.
This spaceman (everyone calls him PK, so he accepts the name (which means drunk in the local language, but this fact is not touched in the film) tries to make sense of everything he sees around and especially the hundreds of religions and their rituals abundant in India. As he tries to satisfy the expectations of the religions he has funny moments. But his goal is to find a god that will help him find the remote control device that would allow him to return home.
Aamir Khan's play is really amazing, he has more or less created a character that is similar to what Tom Hanks did in Forrest Gump. I must mention here that Khan uses the Stanislavski Method of acting.
Anushka Sharma has matched his performance. Hundreds of minor characters add a lot to the narrative. The naive questions PK asks and the paths he follows once he gets the answer, usually misinterpreting what was said, makes you laugh loudly. At the same time we keep thinking of how funny the daily acts and falsehoods we encounter are in real life. Another important thing we can get out of the film is the ability to understand the thought and belief systems which are the enormous wealth of Indian society and the parasites that benefit from these, the poverty, the colours, the joy, the entertainment and the squalor.
I strongly advise you to watch this film, which takes almost three hours. As a bonus you will find exceptionally good music and the inevitable dance scenes found in Indian films.
Thank you, Levent