No one can do deranged better than SRK and he smacks it hard in his latest flick Fan, a self-indulgent, self-obssessed saga of superstardom laced with a self-depricating tone to offset the halo built around the Badshah of Bollywood.
SRK plays himself on screen, albeit adopting a tame Aryan Khanna nametag to deflect any pointers at himself. Real life shots of his stupendous fame and humungous fan-following are interspersed throughout the movie, lending credibility to the aura of his onscreen persona.
Primarily, the film focuses on Aryan Khanna's biggest 'fan' Gaurav, SRK again in a prosthetics-aided, younger, smoother and a tad artificial look. He is gawky but endearing with a single minded devotion towards his hero. Upon being rebuffed by his idol for his foolhardiness, Gaurav turns his reverence into revulsion. This transformation forms the crux of the plot where the crazed love of a fan for his hero turns into hatred causing turbulence in the latter's life.
Shahrukh is impeccable in both the roles. He is suave, controlled, dynamic and supremely arrogant as the reigning superstar of the country. To his credit, he has taken enough potshots at himself to negate his cockiness. The fragile public image, the dancing at weddings for a 'bomb'(the moolah kind) and the deference to a sour Mr. Moneybag are snippets of the chinks in the armour of any aging superstar.
SRK as his own fan is even better. His energy is contagious and you don't mind going overboard with him in his passionate zeal to meet his idol and indulge his crazy antics. You even condone the unbelievable limits he goes to impress Aryan, his hero. He is after-all a lovable rogue which was SRK's forte in his initial movies. There has been no other universally accepted anti-hero like SRK in the Indian celluloid history and the credit must go to his ability to strike a chord with his audience who take the merry-go-round ride of incredulity and absurdity with him, cheering him loudly along the way. The long drawn chase sequences do get tedious after a while and one wishes for crisper and tauter editing to avoid the yawns which creep in surreptitiously at times.
Can too much of good things be bad? If you take 2 SRks , both antithesis of each other, do you get a via media? Pertinent point is, is it needed? Probably yes, to give a decent ending to the moot point the movie raises but fails to answer. Can a celebrity, no matter how self-assured and detached to the feelings of his fans, be in any way held responsible for the disillusionment and the consequent mental depravity of a fan? Just short of glorifying the gory end, the movie never really addresses the key issue it unwittingly highlights. Perhaps the intent was only to showcase the histrionics of an actor who was losing his sheen in his recent movies. Predictably, the double dose of sheer talent shines luminously in 'fan', enthralling us to the core.
What it does spell out is a relevant statement and not just in cinematic context; Be a fan, not a fanatic!