Breaking Bad

For a filmstar who is just a couple of years short of that dreaded 50-year-mark,Shah Rukh Khan has never really had a terminal mid-life professional crisis. Sure,hes had his early dips,when he wasnt super-starry enough. That was the time he was saying yes to directors who came to him with interesting ideas. Being okay,sort of,with playing second fiddle. But very soon in his 20-year-and-some career in 1992,he came out in the movies via an intriguing double-bill: in a cameo in Mani Kauls Idiot,and Raj Kanwars Deewana he knew exactly which way lay fame and riches. Not in art films which would gather acclaim but scant viewership,but in mainstream cinema which would allow him to leap around the screen,fizzing away,demanding: look at me,look at no one but me.

I saw Kauls film at a festival there was no other way to catch it,as opposed to Deewana which had a noisy theatrical release. Shah Rukhs was a tiny part but he had a face that demanded attention. He has built on that,armed with both luck and charisma,and that has been his mantra since. Kinesis of the kind Shah Rukh has is in the repertoire of a handful of stars. They blind you not with their actorly abilities,but with their propensity to throw light outward. Even when they share screen space with other stars,their outlines are sharper. In the films that have done well for him,Shah Rukhs light has been the brightest,even when he is busy rifling through his stated set of five expressions.

My endeavour,as a film critic,has always been to look for that half-an-expression more. To see what this man,with a face that would definitely not launch a thousand ships even if it were to be slathered with his favourite brand of fairness cream,but adorned with a set of magnetic eyebrows,could do if it were pushed. Or if he pushed himself. Because he is now,and has been for several years,Brand SRK,all caps. Designer watches for the wealthy,mid-sized cars for the middle class,and plebian cool cool sar ka tel: hes covered all ends of the spectrum,ad-wise. The same wide swathe that sees him on TV transfers itself to theatres when his films release.

In 2013,he is in the enviable position to choose what he will do. Or not. His choices have been dictated,as is evident from the films he has been doing as a producer,he employs himself: no ones pushing him to the wall to do the films he does,by the box office. Which is not quite a bad thing,because no one is in it for nothing,especially a superstar whose fortunes affect the working of the entire industry. Do it for the money,by all means,but do your films have to be quite so desperately mined for a few laughs,so depressingly bereft of novelty? Yes,I did find some laughs in Chennai Express,but it was despite myself.

Chennai Express is back to re-re-visiting the template of the 18-year-old Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge,that most beloved of Shah Rukh hits,which is also a monstrous albatross: how many more times can he credibly play a dulha wanting to take his dulhaniya away? Sending yourself up is a good way to do it. It means that you have a degree of self-awareness which makes the clowning somewhat palatable. But how much of it is too much? Self -mockery needs a smart parlay. Too much can tip you dangerously close to self-caricature,and thats really hard to roll back from.

Time to read the right table. What is one two ka? Three. Yes,correct answer.