Maneesh Sharma’s Fan is based on the premise that a star- struck fan can go to impossible measures to meet his idol and then sabotage his work. This would have only been possible in India, where devotion to films and celebs is second to none.
The movie is madly inventive at first, opening up a great scope for drama that yields from its unusual premise. Here, ‘the fan’ is actually a look-alike of the star.
The young fan is Gaurav Chanana (played by Shahrukh Khan himself with some help from prosthetics and VFX) whose obsession over Aryan Khanna (Shahrukh Khan) soon turns maniacal. Chanana harbours deep obsession towards the star, and this takes a turn for the worst after the star refuses to meet him.
Several Hindi cinemas over the years have tried to demystify the unusual relation between a celebrity and a fan. Chandan Arora’s Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon, Anurag Kahsyap’s Murabba, a part of the collective Bombay Talkies, Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dhanak and in an unusual way, RK Balki’s Shamitabh, are all in the same spirit as Fan. But the movie’s unique premise gives it an unusual advantage over other films to explore the psyche of both the fan and the star.
And it holds up to it reasonably well.
Several Hindi cinemas over the years have tried to demystify the unusual relation between a celebrity and a fan. But Fan’s unique premise gives it an unusual advantage over other films to explore the psyche of both the fan and the star.
The movie is effortless in its portrayal of young Gaurav, whose obsession swings wildly in intensity from a charming fixation to something more sinister. When we are finally introduced to Aryan Khanna, the subject of Gaurav’s fandom, we see a star in the last lap his youth quietly struggling to hold on to his stardom. His insecurities are hidden somewhere within his charismatic persona.
For a good half of its runtime, Fan does well to mix these parallels, effectively humanising a star (Khanna’s stardom could well be a template for real life Bollywood stars). It charmingly tells a tale of a young boy whose obsession, although unhealthy at times, is heartfelt.
But by the time the movie reaches its second act, all earlier pretensions of the film being a ‘character drama’ is put to rest. From then onwards, Fan abuses its story’s premise to extract uneasy drama that could have been achieved in a different film altogether. It misses key dramatic moments and slips them between shots as it gives more importance to thrills of elaborate chase sequences and action.
By the time the movie meets its resolution, it’s already unforgivably deviated from its main premise. In an almost apologetic statement, Gaurav’s mother spells out the reason for the movie’s existence.
“If only we had exposed Gaurav to the hardships of the stars, and not just the glamour, none of this would have happened.”
No movie should have do this, especially an ambitious movie like Fan.
***
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