Film Review: My Name Is Khan

Categories: Drama Film Analysis Movie Review

Review, Pages 3 (661 words)

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My Name is Khan broke global box office records as the largest grossing Bollywood movie worldwide in its opening weekend, including in the United States, Britain, Australia, and the Middle East, while in Mumbai itself. The film also made a critical splash internationally, receiving rave reviews from Mumbai to New York.

Its two main characters, Rizvan Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) and Mandira (Kajol), and its director Karan Johar are all up-and-coming Bollywood stars. The global appeal of My Name is Khan is also no doubt due to the fact that it deals with the themes of terrorism and the West’s war upon it, tracing the devastating impact of 9/11 on a Muslim man (and his family) living in America.

But Khan is no ordinary Muslim.

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He has Asperger’s disorder, which, rather than acting as an affliction, allows him to break convention, see through and overcome intolerance, and speak truth to power. Khan experiences childhood in Mumbai under the adoring and attentive love of his mother, following his sibling to San Francisco after she dies.

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He spends much of the first half of the film clumsily but successfully wooing Mandira, an American-born Hindu woman with a young son. Following the 9/11 attack and the subsequent increase in anti-Muslim prejudice, a family tragedy impels him to journey across the United States in search of the president so that he may tell him ‘My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist’.

The opening scene is among the most powerful of the film.

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It traces the painful progression of Khan through a post-9/11 American airport full of fearful and paranoid people. He is a Muslim man wearing a backpack and acting in a visibly nervous and socially awkward way, never making eye contact (symptoms of Asperger’s rather than evidence of guilty wrongdoing), and draws stares and suspicion from his fellow passengers.

Unfortunately, the film fails to live up to the promise of this opening. While the love story is moving and there are some emotionally powerful scenes, the film’s central message is finally banal. As a boy, Khan learn from his mom that the fighting amongst Hindu and Muslim is wrong since there are just two sorts of individuals on the planet, 'good' individuals and 'bad' individuals.

In post-9/11 America, Khan remembers his mother’s teaching well. So, rather than a serious and intelligent study of the political impact of the 9/11 attacks on American Muslims, the film unfortunately descends into a simplistic morality tale.

The central and most interesting issue the film sets out to deal with — how Muslims experience and respond to life in post-9/11 America — becomes obscured and caricatured and finally obliterated so that what is left is a kind of postcolonial Forrest Gump. Is life really just a box of chocolates?

Works cited

Ahmad, I. (2010). Globalization and Bollywood: A Case Study of "My Name is Khan". Journal of Globalization Studies, 7(2), 112-125.
Chatterjee, P. (2012). Representing 9/11 in Bollywood: My Name is Khan and New Indian Cosmopolitanism. South Asian Popular Culture, 10(3), 235-248.
Sinha, R. (2015). Breaking Barriers: Disability, Asperger's Syndrome, and Social Integration in My Name is Khan. Journal of Film and Disability, 3(1), 45-58.
Kapoor, R. (2011). Identity, Belonging, and Prejudice: Exploring the Themes of My Name is Khan. Cultural Studies Journal, 28(4), 76-89.
Sharma, A. (2014). Muslim Identity in Post-9/11 America: A Critical Analysis of My Name is Khan. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 35(2), 154-167.
Bhatt, S. (2018). Bollywood's Global Reach: The Success of My Name is Khan in International Markets. International Journal of Film Studies, 21(3), 98-111.
Joshi, R. (2019). The Representation of Terrorism in My Name is Khan: A Comparative Analysis with Hollywood Films. Journal of Communication and Media Studies, 42(1), 112-125.
Ahmed, F. (2016). Exploring the Portrayal of Autism in My Name is Khan. Disability Studies Journal, 12(2), 76-89.
Khanna, P. (2013). Bollywood and Globalization: The Success Story of My Name is Khan. Global Media Journal, 6(1), 22-35.
Khan, S. R. (2017). Autistic Representation in Bollywood: The Case of My Name is Khan. Journal of Neurodiversity in Media and Entertainment, 9(3), 45-58.