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Shah Rukh Khan’s enigmatic charm has no boundaries, and it recently reached the shores of Lake Maggiore, where he was honoured with the Pardo Alla Carriera award at the Locarno Film Festival. The prestigious award was presented to Shah Rukh for his significant contributions to Indian cinema. After receiving the award, the actor had an interaction with Locarno Film Festival’s artistic director Giona A Nazarro. This interaction was a gift that kept on giving as SRK regaled the audience with his timely quips and deep insights into how his mind worked. The diverse nature of Indian cinema, and the nuances that are present in cinema of every language was also a point of discussion. Shah Rukh played the question on the front foot, and said, “Honestly, to regionalise Indian cinema is wrong. The country is so vast that we don’t have different dialects across the nation, but different languages altogether. Be it Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Odia, Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati… it is all Indian cinema.”
As a keen observer of Indian cinema, and having worked with stalwarts from many of these languages, Shah Rukh Khan astutely pointed out, “Some of the best storytelling comes from the South of India. Some of the greatest superstars of Indian cinema are from Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, etc… Of course, we know of them in India, but with films like Jawan, Baahubali, and RRR, everybody is noticing it.” The actor, who often ropes in South Indian technicians in his Hindi films, opined that the South cinema is really fantastic both cinematically and technically. “After working with Mani Ratnam sir in Dil Se, I wanted to work in the ‘South’ genre film. It wasn’t enough that I worked with a South Indian director.”
Talking about how this desire gave rise to Jawan, his film with Tamil director Atlee, Shah Rukh said it is important to understand that every area in India has a different approach to telling a story. “South has a larger-than-life approach. It is very robust with a lot of music going on. They love their heroes to be larger-than-life. I really enjoyed acting in such a film. It was very theatrical. It was very colourful, and lovely,” shared the Chennai Express actor, who also touched upon the linguistic divide between him and his director Atlee. “After a point. We just started gesticulating. Atlee is a wonderful guy, and he was kind enough to name his son after my dad. Whenever I asked him if a take was okay, he would say ‘Mass’. It meant good. It was a lot of shaking of hands, eating idly, dosa, and chilli chicken,” said SRK.
Wrapping up his love story with South cinema, the multi-faceted superstar pointed out the kind of South Indian talent in Jawan. “We had some wonderful actors from the South. We had Vijay Sethupathi. We had Nayanthara ji. We had editing by Ruben. In fact, Jawan was the first fusion of Hindi and South Indian cinema that transcended boundaries. People loved the film, and it did a lot of business. Jawan was such a great experience.”
On the work front, Shah Rukh Khan revealed that he was indeed working in Sujoy Ghosh’s King. He shared that it was an “age-centric actioner” that needed him to undergo training. The film, which reportedly also stars his daughter Suhana Khan, is set to become the first film to feature the father-daughter duo.
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