From playing a wrestler to an alien, to a man confronted by the horrors of partition, Aamir Khan is nothing if not versatile, yet he always manages to bring an authenticity to the screen which is true to the voice of Indian cinema and has made him one of the country’s most cutting edge actors. The common thread in Khan’s films however, is that they always leave their audiences wrestling with their conscience.

The role of women in society has become a common theme in his films in recent years. His last film, Dangal, was a David and Goliath tale of adversity, based on a true story about a former amateur wrestler who decides to train his daughters to become wrestling champions and in the process, challenges his own and his country’s views on what it is to be an Indian woman. The film, which came out at Christmas went on to become the top grossing Bollywood movie of all time at the box office worldwide in just three weeks.

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In his latest screen offering, Secret Superstar, Khan revisits the same themes explored in Dangal and takes them a step further in a tale of love and redemption with a toe tapping soundtrack to boot. Unapologetically Bollywood in all its musical, melodramatic glory, the film, which sees Khan reunited with his on-screen daughter in Dangal, Zaira Wasim, tells the story of 15-year-old Insiya, the archetypal small town girl with big dreams of becoming a singer. What is interesting about the film is that it subverts the usual image of the burqa as a symbol of oppression as it becomes a route to freedom for Insiya.

When she realises the sacrifices her mother made, she finds escape from an unexpected source, a womanising talent show judge called Shakti Kumar (Khan.) “The centre of the film is the 15-year-old girl who is a very talented singer and has a lot of hopes and dreams to follow her passion and unfortunately her environment is very constricted so it is about her struggle to overcome that, her struggle for independence and her struggle to find her own voice,” said Khan, who both produced and starred in the film.

“It is a film about the empowerment of the girl child, but unlike Dangal, which was about the daughters from the point of view of the father, this film goes one step further than that where the protagonist is a 15-year-old girl from a small town in India and it is her voice that we are hearing, her point of view we are seeing.

“Also, Dangal is a film which was focusing more on parents and trying to get them to understand that there should be no difference in our behaviour towards a girl child than a boy child, whereas this is from the point of view of the girl herself. “I think it’s a great story, especially in these times. Very few films are made with the voice of a teenage girl, which I thought is a very important voice to hear. Secret Superstar doesn’t talk to parents so much, but more to teenage kids. Of course the themes also apply to anyone above their teenage years because I could be 40 and still have dreams and still feel that I am in a situation where I need to fight my way through so in that sense it applies to anyone who has dreams and aspirations and wants to achieve them.”

While the 52-year-old actor takes a back seat in the film, he is in his element in his supporting role as the sleazetastic Shakti Kumar. Less lovable, more rogue, he plays a womanising singer /songwriter and talent show judge who makes Simon Cowell look like, well a Cheryl in comparison, who gets blackballed by the music industry after reducing a child contestant to tears.

“He’s not really somebody with a heart of gold. He is someone who is very arrogant and full of himself,” said Khan, “He’s very self-centred and not really bothered about anyone around him. He is fairly rude and obnoxious as a person. I don’t know if he has any redeeming qualities, but he is someone who is so obviously politically incorrect in every way that you end up laughing at him.”

Despite his flaws and flamboyant dress sense, he emerges as more of a father figure to the girl than her own dad ever was and both characters end up finding their voices through their relationship with each other.

While in places, it does verge into cheesiness but that adds to the charm and makes the story more relatable. “I have played him as honestly as I could, but the fact is he is written as a caricature of himself,” Khan added.

“There are people in our world who are caricatures of themselves and they are almost acting all the time even in their daily life and Shakti Kumar is that kind of a person.” In the West, there is a tendency to use Hollywood as a yardstick to contextualise cinema from other countries, to the extent that it has become lazy shorthand where every other actor is a Bollywood Tom Cruise.

However in this case, Khan’s career trajectory is very similar to Leonardo DiCaprio in that he managed to make the difficult transition from teen pin up to respected actor, without losing his movie idol status. However, even in the early days, he was always experimental and his name was synonymous with well written scripts and intelligent plots.

“My struggle was more to do with the kind of cinema I wanted to be in. Also I began my career at a time when the kinds of films being made were not suited to my taste. I tried to follow my own sensibilities and that was an uphill battle,” said Khan.

The turning point came when he launched his own production company and made Lagaan, which went on to be short listed for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Since then he has continued to blur the line between art house and commercial cinema, releasing just one film a year, something which was previously unheard of in the world’s most prolific film industry.

(The independent)