At Locarno to accept the blur festival’s lifetime accomplishment award, the amateur says that afterwards beat from the accent for two years, he’s an afflicted man.
It is an afire aerial summer in the Swiss beach boondocks of Locarno and the Indian cine brilliant Shah Rukh Khan is aerial in the king, the emperor, the Baadshah of the movies, the man whose fanbase-headcount makes him one of the world’s better stars.
Starting as the Bollywood bad guy in aboriginal 90s films such as Darr and Baazigar, Khan fabricated an amazing advance in 1995 as a puppyish romcom advance in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride). From here, he became a Bollywood superstar in all address of genres: musicals, melodramas, thrillers and comedies, including the 2001 ancestors adventure Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (Sometimes Happiness, Sometimes Sadness), the adventurous ball Devdas and the activity amazing Jawan. Shah Rukh Khan is his own genre. Now, accepting taken a breach during Covid to recharge his batteries and breeding his mojo, he has alternate to acting and, at 58, is accepting the Locarno blur festival’s Pardo lifetime accomplishment accolade – and giving his aboriginal account in two years.
Khan is fit and toned, agilely announced and relaxed, his apparent leonine attendance a little chock-full by aphotic glasses. Before we start, he unselfconsciously submits to his aggregation as they fuss about him, blockage his clothes, moisturizing his bark a little, spraying his abundant hair, for all the apple as if this is a TV appearance. This is the additional time I accept apparent him in the flesh. The aboriginal was back I was one of a army in Mumbai, area Khan has a home and sometimes playfully appears on the balustrade to address his fans. That day, the admirers went wild.
I ask Khan if he enjoys awards ceremonies. “Yes,” he says, beaming. “I adore it. I am actual abandoned about this! I adulation accepting awards. I adulation the ceremony. I get a little afraid if I acquire to accord speeches. Especially with all-embracing awards, because again I charge to accomplish abiding Indian cinema is presented well. I acquire to be on my best behaviors. I acquire to ascendancy my faculty of humors. Because cinema for India is such an important thing.” I ask if he has a bays chiffonier and his eyes gleam: “I do. It’s bigger than this room! I acquire 300 awards. I acquire a nine-story appointment and on every attic, I acquire some of the awards. Actually, it’s not a bays room. It’s a library which is advised like an English library.”
It is aback I activate to ask about the circadian activity of a aggressive Indian cine brilliant that my assured simpering begins and I alpha cogent him it isn’t the aboriginal time I’ve apparent him. “Waving from my house?” he interrupts with a smile. Sheepishly, I nod. Khan smiles and inclines his arch a little, as if to acquire the tribute. Again, it’s aback to the day job. “When I’m accustomed any role, comedic, bad guy, acceptable guy, lover, I get actual nervous.
Will I be able to deliver? Am I accepting it right? Is the banana timing, right? Am I actuality beggarly enough? Acquire I got the articulation right? I adulation accomplishing roles area I could be mean, but I acquire a affection of gold. I’m not accustomed to abounding roles like that. They’re commonly roles area I am admiring to women.”
In Jawan, he relished the role of the activity hero. Might he, like Tom Cruise, aloof go absolutely into action? Khan’s acknowledgment takes in his Contempo breach from the accessible glare. “When I came into the industry, I was an athlete. My life’s dream was to acquire a six-pack, abrasion a white vest, acquire a adult with my arm about her, claret on my face and a gun in my hand. My dream was to access a room, addition says: ‘Who are you?’ and I shoot them.
“At the age of 55, I took an affectionate of sabbatical. During the communicable there was annihilation abroad to do and I was cogent everyone: apprentice Italian affable and assignment out. I was alive out. I congenital a body. After four years, bodies started missing me because afore that I was too abundant in everybody’s face.” For a moment, he is thoughtful. “People said: ‘Will you do a film?’ I said: ‘Only if it’s an activity film!’”
Khan’s circadian dieting isn’t what your ability expects. He about eats alone one meal – a claimed best that has annihilation to do with alternate abnegation – and hits the gym for aloof bisected an hour a day. “I go to beddy-bye at bristles in the morning. When Mark Wahlberg gets up, I go off to sleep. And again, I deathwatch up about nine or 10 if I’m shooting. But again, I will appear home at 2am, booty an ablution and again assignment out afore I go to sleep.”
We appear to my Favorite of his films: the alarmingly claimed doppelganger ball Fan, from 2016, in which Khan plays a blur brilliant acutely based on himself, and also, in facial prosthetics, an adverse stalker-fan who obsessively identifies with him and wants to annihilate him. Khan becomes activated at the acknowledgment of Fan, an attenuate box-office underperformer. “Nobody admired Fan!” he complains. “There are three or four films which are abutting to my heart, because they didn’t do well. Fan is one of them.”
He tells me about what the blur agency to him. “I appear from an actual accustomed lower-middle-class background. But now I am the star, I am the ‘king’.” (He makes a self-deprecating air adduce gesture.) “But I am a actual simple being at heart. That guy you saw bouncing to bodies … that’s not me.” He leans forward: “I’ve not done an account for two years now. I would like to breach your affection and acquaint you … if you anticipate you are interviewing that star, he’s not here. You got the amiss Shah Rukh.”
I ask him about the approaching of Bollywood and put to him my approach that it is almighty because it carries on with article Hollywood abandoned: the musical. He says: “Indian cinema like a cabaret: music, comedy, drama, a mishmash, its ability be dancing, bodies falling down. I do accept it’s an added difficult art form. It doesn’t abstract blur into comedy, romance, horror, musicals. It tells the accomplished story.” The accepted all-overs about bodies deserting movie-going for alive TV, is, he says, aloof a “settling” period, like the apparatus of VCR. But Bollywood will be at the beginning of the new beachcomber of cinema-going.
With my time aloof about up, Khan leaves me with his key insight: “Emotions are the black that beleaguer you in the theatre!” And with this affected phrase, accompanied by a bright smile, the account is concluded. I am ushered abroad, and the aggregation descends already afresh on this complicated and absorbing man.
