Entertainment / PK Movie Review

PK Movie Review

Entertainment Dec 23, 2014

by Nidhi Shrivastava

Aamir Khan's PK Questions India's Religious Culture

Rating: 4/5

Starring: Aamir Khan, Anushka Sharma, Sushant Singh Rajput, Saurabh Shukla, Sanjay Dutt and Boman Irani

Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan does it again. Known for his intellectual and political passion — especially when it comes to Indian society — Khan stars as PK, a naïve yet loveable alien who has come from beyond this world to research how human beings behave and live. It's a refreshing look at religion, society and the world through the eyes of an outsider.

PK encounters not just the goodness that human beings offer but also the evils of society. He loses a special remote control as he makes his way through the world. Unable to speak or walk around naked, as he tells his newfound friend and reporter, Jagat Janani (Anushka Sharma), he finds clothes in what he calls “dancing cars” and transmits language through a friendly and loving Bhojpuri-speaking prostitute. Since he's from another part of the universe, he questions everything he sees and touches — much to the annoyance of the people around him. When he asks people about the missing remote, they tell him to search for God, who could help him recover the lost device.

This is where the real drama at the heart of the film begins. PK learns how Indian society worships various gods and how it uses and abuses religion, brainwashing believers and exploiting them so that the business of religion, which is so prevalent in India, can flourish. By questioning these beliefs, PK’s ideas reflect a mirror to the people — especially when a showdown brings him face-to-face with Tapasvi (Saurabh Shukla), a powerful yet exploitative sadhu who capitalizes on the beliefs of his followers.

Importantly, the film speaks volumes about the business and industry that have cropped up through religion in India. PK also highlights the fact that, as human beings, we construct our relationships based on our assumptions of others. The revealing moment is when the character Jaggu realizes that she hadn't questioned the disappearance of Sarfaraz (Sushant Singh Rajput) but had assumed that all Muslims were treacherous because he was absent from a marriage registry. This prejudice leads to a major misunderstanding between the two characters. Without PK questioning Jaggu's assumption, she wouldn't have realized that she had based her relationship on a cultural stereotype instead of the truth.

Directed by Rajkumar Hirani and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who is known for his earlier work such as 3 Idiots (2009), PK is a must-watch film. Not only does the film make you question and contemplate religion and humanity through the lens of an outsider, but it also serves as a hilarious comedy that will keep you laughing at PK’s innocence and his naïveté as he observes Planet Earth and its inhabitants. The film reminded me of a retelling of Samuel Beckett play Waiting For Godot with bits and pieces of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The beauty of PK, perhaps, is that the writers chose to make PK very much like us humans. This led to more comic relief and confusion because he behaves like us but remains very different.

_{Featured Image: PK/Facebook}

Nidhi Shrivastava

Author

Nidhi Shrivastava (@shnidhi) is a Ph.D. candidate in the English department at Western University and works as an adjunct professor in at Sacred Heart University. She holds double masters in South Asian Studies and Women's Studies. Her research focuses on Hindi film cinema, censorship, the figure o...

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PK Movie Review

by Nidhi Shrivastava

Aamir Khan's PK Questions India's Religious Culture

Nidhi Shrivastava

COMMENTS

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