Mumbai, August 27: In a few days from now the Government of India would announce its awards for the best actor and the citation would not be monitored as closely this year, as it has ever been done in the past. After all it is Khan vs. Khan, i.e. Shah Rukh Khan is pitted against Aamir Khan to clinch the award. Once the National Awards are announced it could in a way be a pointer about who is the numero uno Khan in the film industry.
The options for the jury is indeed daunting as the films to choose from are one of the finest that industry has produced in the recent past, CHAK DE pitted against TAARE ZAMEEN PAR. Can a comparative analysis be made between the two of them to decide who is a better actor. If one were to seek the tenor of role between the two Khans in their respective films, then Shah Rukh Khan has a longer role in CHAK DE as compared to Aamir Khan in TAARE ZAMEEN PAR.
But are the subjects that have dealt different? Not really, both really talk about the change in attitudes to achieve success. As a coach Kabir Khan in CHAK DE brings a bunch of self-seekers and welds them into a wining unit by tapping on their latent strengths and weaving them into a cohesive unit. In the same manner Aamir Khan as a school teacher in TAARE ZAMEEN PAR also brings about the attitudinal change in the child as also his parents and the whole of school by highlighting that dyslexia is not a disease. The other comparison between both of them flows out of the logic proposed above, i.e. both of them have enacted the role of a mentor, and one is mentoring a child while other is mentoring a team of women. Both are disadvantageous categories and the task of jury further compounds.
While Aamir Khan has been enacting roles that requires change in his physical appearance, it is for the first time on the silver screen that Shah Rukh Khan has sported a beard in CHAK DE, if one discounts the little time that he was shown as having a beard in VEER-ZAARA. Could this then turn out to be the deciding factor in favour of Shah Rukh Khan? If one goes by the political winds of the time, Shah Rukh Khan is closer to the political dispension of the time, as compared to Aamir, and this fact could become an operative factor at the back of the mind of the members of the jury when they decide the award?
Or conferring the title jointly on them would make a history? The fog from the enigma would be lifted in another week or so, till that time we should keep our fingers crossed.
—Agencies