My Name Is Khan: An American Tale

My Name Is Khan, a Bollywood vehicle for the crazy-famous Shahrukh Khan, isn’t exactly getting hurt by all of the Forrest Gump comparisons (or the Forrest-Gump-like box office). Like Forrest Gump, Khan chronicles the unique fortunes of a mentally simple, absurdly noble protagonist against a backdrop of massive social upheaval. To call it heavy-handed would be an understatement. Most of the characters act as archetypes rather than individuals, serving as ciphers for their religious traditions or ethnic backgrounds. This isn’t necessarily a drawback. In fact, the best and most productive way to view this film is as an epic, populated with mythical tropes, following the development of Muslim-American identity after 9/11. The other way is to spend the rest of the movie nudging everyone around you and repeatedly stage-whispering, “That would never happen, you guys!” And your friends would get really sick of it.

Trope-conscious viewers, beware: we all know that the cinematic-industrial complex loves characters with neurological disorders, especially movie-friendly ones like Asperger’s. Intelligent, articulate but socially awkward misfits who have difficulty expressing their emotions produce cheap and easy movie magic. Rizwan Khan(Shahrukh Khan), the film’s protagonist, is no different from any movie savant you’ve seen before. He’s a holy fool; an emotionally tone-deaf man who is capable of tremendous feeling; a beauty-products salesman on a mission. Shahrukh Khan’s Asperger tricks—odd hand placement, evasive eye movements, a strange shuffle to his walk—are serviceable, but it’s the sweet expressiveness of his face that make his Khan worth following for two and a half hours.

‘My Name is Khan’ is an overly long movie that changes direction and tone more than once with debatable effectiveness. Rizwan Khan narrates his experience as a Muslim Indian-American, from his childhood in India struggling with Asperger’s to his cute San Francisco romance with a Hindu single mother, all of which is framed by his single-minded mission to meet the President. Rizwan overcomes some of his natural awkwardness in wooing Mandira (the crazy-beautiful Kajol), a hairstylist with a young son named Sam, and the three of them form a unique, multicultural family bond. While it’s tempting to dismiss their perfectly blended family and consciously diverse array of friends as saccharine or stilted, there’s something undeniably compelling about the community they create.

***Spoiler Alert***

All of this changes, of course, painfully and immediately, after September 11. The Khans quickly find themselves having to constantly and actively distinguish themselves as ‘good’ Americans. Haseena, Rizwan’s psychologist sister-in-law, stops wearing her hijab after she is assaulted. While the majority of their friends and neighbors remain accepting, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq escalate, former acquaintances begin to exclude and ostracize them. One day, after soccer practice, Sam is attacked and beaten to death by a group of high-schoolers in an anti-Muslim hate crime, an act that changes Rizwan and Mandira’s lives forever.

Mandira, overwhelmed by grief and rage, blames Rizwan’s Muslim background for Sam’s death and throws him out of the house. Rizwan is unable to understand Mandira’s irrational behavior and asks when he will be allowed to come home. Since Sam was attacked because he was perceived as a ‘dangerous Muslim,’ Mandira tells Rizwan that when he’s explained to everyone in America, even the President himself, that he is not a terrorist, then she’ll feel safe enough to let him back in—never dreaming he’ll take her demand seriously.

At this point the movie shifts from a lighthearted romantic comedy to the classic hero’s journey–Mandira’s ‘call to adventure’ sets the monomyth in motion. Rizwan begins an epic quest to meet the President and to tell him one thing: ‘My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist.’ Yet unlike a typical hero, Rizwan comes to no realization, changes none of his behaviors, and remains unaltered throughout the film. His journey is not an internal one of self-realization, but a journey to change the way he is perceived by others.

To accomplish this, Rizwan is set up to be as non-threatening and unobjectionable a man as possible. He is a better Muslim than his fellow Muslims, a better American than his fellow Americans. He donates significant amounts of his money to charity benefiting the families affected by 9/11 and insists a religious charity keep his money for foreign aid even after they turn him away from a Christians-only event.

At one point, Rizwan enters into a mosque to pray in a new and unfamiliar city, where he overhears a man fomenting dissent among fellow worshipers and calling for violence. Rizwan not only challenges and rebukes the man (calling him ‘Satan,’ bringing to mind the ritual stoning of the devil during the hajj), he informs the FBI of the incident. In ritually confronting and opposing extremism, Rizwan establishes himself as an ideal representation of true Islamic behavior. His quiet merit and devotion to humanity eventually wins him supporters all over the country, especially after an interlude in Wilhelmina, Georgia, a post-Katrina New Orleans stand-in. Here the filmmakers attempt to draw parallels between the African-American and the Muslim-American experiences, but it’s a slightly jarring experience, especially given that the only two black characters with names are “Mama Jenny” (Jennifer Echols) and “Funny Hair Joel (Adrian Kali Turner).”

The closer Rizwan gets to his goal, the more persecution he faces, as being a brown Muslim and wanting to meet the President are reason enough for some to find him suspicious. Rizwan’s limited awareness of the severity and the injustice of his own suffering make the ending scenes all the more poignant and affecting. Yes, it’s a direct attempt to manipulate your emotions, and yes, it’s heavy-handed after the Gumpian fashion. But it’s in the quieter moments—a scene with some balloons and a yellow jacket, a pause for prayer, rather than the over-the-top moral pronouncements, that the film’s true heart lies.

A minor quibble: the soundtrack is incredibly distracting and inappropriate—bombastic and pulsing where it should be measured not to mention full of unnecessary violin swells. It’s as if the director wasn’t comfortable trusting the film to make its own emotional statement and felt the need to buttress every pivotal moment with a musical indication of what the audience is supposed to be feeling.

“My Name Is Khan” is in English, Hindi and Urdu with English subtitles.