Aamir is direct: He will direct films

TORONTO: Cinematheque Ontario, a division of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) group, will honour Bollywood actor Aamir Khan by holding a programme of a series of screening of four of his landmark films from June 26-29.

The programme on Khan entitled Bollywood Auteur: The Rising of Aamir Khan will feature films like: Earth, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, Rang De Basanti and The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey.

These are important landmarks in Khan’s career as each one is an epic of both national narrative and performing style define Khan’s emergence as perhaps India’s most important auteur of the past decade

While, Khan grew up in that glittering world of celluloid, he has been chosen to receive this honour in Toronto, as throughout his rising he has taken liberties with the doctrine of Bollywood stardom. Two of his films, Earth and Lagaan have been screened at the TIFF earlier.

In a series of films — beginning, not coincidentally, with Torontian Deepa Mehta’s Earth (1998) — he has staged a one-man revolution against simple hero worship and gone for more complex characters, more rigorous technique, and stories that resonate more with the contemporary Indian psyche.

Like Brando toppling the gods of Hollywood’s golden age, this five-foot, five-inch-tall notorious perfectionist has shattered the mould of the singing, dancing, fighting idol. 

Khan has also led the push for increased professionalism in the Indian film industry. He was the first star to insist on a finished script before shooting began, the first star to shoot only one film at a time, the first to immerse himself with Method focus in his roles.

In Mehta’s Earth Khan first began to show how deep he could dig for a role. Playing the Muslim ice candy man who helps precipitate disaster in a multi-faith community, he gives an intense, dark performance — a risk few Indian leading men would dare take.

“The standard he sets continues to transform film performance in India, which is especially remarkable given that he has had no formal training as an actor,” says Cameron Bailey, programmer with the TIFF, whose areas of interest include Indian cinema. He has worked as a film critic and programmer in Toronto for over the last fifteen years. 

When he is ready, Khan has said, he plans to return to his first ambition, directing films. But he has already used his position as a star to hasten the end of Bollywood’s rollicking old days and the beginning of the new, globalised Indian cinema. 

“Just as the thrills of Japanese anime, Hong Kong action, and mainland Chinese spectacle have become stitched into the fabric of Western movies, so too will Bollywood – a term despised for its derivative nature by many who work there – lend the world its pleasures. The strongest, most elegant bridge to that future is the work of Aamir Khan,” said Bailey.