Happy Shahrukh Week!  It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  And this year, it’s happening twice!  Woot-woot!  So, look for another week of posts before Raees on Eid.

Fan‘s coming out in 6 days!  Yaaaaaaay!  And we already know from the trailer more or less what the plot will be.  At least the beginning of the plot.  Gaurav (SRK 1) is a huge fan of Aryan Khanna (SRK 2).  SRK1 tries to meetin SRK2, which leads to SRK2 somehow offending him, and the two are set against each other.  SRK1 follows SRK2 all over the world, SRK2 tries to warn his associates but no one believes him (Possibly.  Unclear), and so SRK2 must fight SRK1 alone.  It’s very exciting!

So, naturally, this made me think of Billu!  Or Billu Barber, depending on which version you get.  In which Shahrukh also plays a superstar who has a hard time with fans.  Only, in Billu, he managed to handle it a little better.  Or maybe not?

The point of Billu, I think, is the loneliness of stardom.  That he has to constantly be all things to all people, never revealing his true self to anyone.  That he can never be sure if anyone would like him if he revealed his true self.  No one hates him, but no one really loves him either.

What’s amazing about Billu, how it is constructed, is that we only see SRK for the longest time through the eyes of others.  He is an enigma, too perfect, Godlike, more and less than human at the same time.  And the film challenges us to think about how we see SRK the person and, by extension all stars, by using real SRK footage to help create SRK’s character here.

But this isn’t all he is, because it isn’t possible for a person to be that simple, that easy, that uncaring about anything except making others happy.  We see him doing everything in the world that he should care about, by everything logical, and he doesn’t seem to.  This isn’t a Godlike man, this is a depressed and lonely man who has lost the ability to connect with anyone else.

All the way back to the first time we see him, watching rushes of himself in a new song sequence.  The director, writer, producer are all gathered around him, excited about the new film, about him, about what they are doing.  And Shahrukh just sits back and ignores everything, smiling a little, paying attention politely, but nothing more.  And this is his job!  The thing that he should care about more than anything else!  And it doesn’t even seem to really matter.

Later, we see him arrive on location for his new film, be shown around his temporary quarters, deal with adoring fans and sycophants.  And again, he doesn’t even seem to care!  He just puts up with it, is polite, is almost bland in his efforts to be uninsulting, unhurtful to anyone.  You know, it kind of strangely reminds me of watching a uncomfortable grown man around a baby.  Like, he isn’t sure how much he can do without injuring them, because he is so powerful and they are so helpless.  So he just doesn’t do anything, just keeps smiling and being nice and saving all his charm and personality and pizzazz for when the cameras are rolling.

Meanwhile, we have Irfaan, living his regular life.  He has no power, he is always humble, the first time we see him, he is begging the school headmaster to let his children stay in class even if he can’t afford fees.  But, he is always himself.  And the only people he cares about making happy, and keeping happy, are his wife and children.  And while his wife may dream of Shahrukh the movie star, she is happy to wake up to her real husband and their life together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJQZ6ND1rCQ&nohtml5=False

At the end of the film, after spending the majority of the time watching Irfaan struggle with his day to day problems, and seeing Shahrukh only from a distance, as a magical powerful being, suddenly their positions are reversed.  We discover that Shahrukh wants what Irrfan has, that just as Irrfan has been trying to reach him, he has been searching for Irrfan, even arranging this location shoot based on having heard that Irrfan lived in this town.  Because, ultimately, all of his power and stardom just obscures the fact that he is still a human who desires connections.

Now, see, in Billu, that lack of connection is treated as his tragedy.  That he was never able to let himself be himself, or trust himself with anyone, leaving him isolated.  But in Fan, I think the same lack of connection may be treated as his fatal flaw.  From the trailer, not only does he fail to build a satisfying connection with SRK1, leading to their conflict, but he also doesn’t have enough of a connection with any of his assistants or followers for them to believe in the danger.

Both these stars are, ultimately, worse off than their fans, because they have nobody who knows the real person and trusts the real person.  In Billu, Shahrukh’s speech at the end talks about how much he longs for a friend, just someone who knew him before and he loves him anyway.  It’s a really beautiful speech, and it is followed up by a lovely scene when Irrfan walks away with his wife, having decided he doesn’t even care anymore about gaining part of Shahrukh’s stardom, that he would rather just go home with his wife and children who love and understand him.  And Shahrukh comes to their house, begging to be let into their life, wanting a part of their reality and connections more than they want his power and fame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKFV619xOHQ&nohtml5=False

Now, I don’t know if it is going to happen in the same way in Fan, but it sure feels like it!  The whole thing is about connections, that’s what the beginning of the trailer says.  And the Shahrukh star in Fan isn’t just without connections, he is rejecting them.  SRK1, the fan, tells him they are connected, tells him that his fandom gives him a relationship to the star.  And SRK2 says he has no connection, no right over him.  SRK2 is losing more by this rejection than SRK1.  Not just because it leads to him being stalked and threatened and so on.  But because SRK1’s love is pure and his heart is good.  And it is the only kind of love that SRK2 can ever expect or rely on.

I am fairly certain his character is going to be alone with no one who loves him for himself, not just because of the trailer, but because of the casting!  If SRK2, the big star, had a real family, a sister or a child or a wife (like Shahrukh has in real life), then don’t you think they would have cast someone bigger than they did to play them?  The cast, as has been publicized, is just Shahrukh, a couple of character actors to play SRK1’s parents, and that’s it.  Unless there is some surprise cameo at the end where we see SRK2’s character return home to a loving family, then it looks like he is without a supporting cast in his life.

If so, it will make me think the same thing I thought while watching Billu: “Thank goodness for Gauri!”  Not just because she is a wonderful wife to him and so on and so on, but because she actually knew him back when he was a huge dorky shy guy and he was the prettiest girl around, and she loved him anyway.  I don’t know if that was the purposeful message of Billu, or if it will be the message in Fan, but if I were his wife, the fact that he looked at these scripts, and was able to relate to the idea of the loneliness of stardom with no one who knows you for you, would be about the sweetest thing he could ever do.  Whether it is explicit or not, it shows that he knows the value of having her in his life.

So, whether or not Fan has a romance of any kind in it (I suspect not), it is still a romantic movie, because it is about the value of a real relationship in your life, someone who loves you for you and not how big a star you are.