"Tare Zameen Par"

Movies like these irritate me. They offer facile solutions to complex problems while trying to pass off an essentially commercial venture as high minded social commentary. Now that I got that off my chest, I can settle down to a less strident discussion.


Malini was watching Tare Zameen Par (TZP) last Saturday night and I sat through it as well (albeit with partial attention since I was working on my computer at the same time). It is the story of a kid with dyslexia and the attempts of a caring art teacher to rescue him. It is a fairly decent directorial debut for Aamir Khan and quite watchable even if entirely predictable. What drew me in was not the story telling, but the performance of a wonderful child actor (Darsheel Safary) and the emotional tug of rescuing a young boy who is unable to speak for himself. Now that I have two sons myself, I find such stories to have a much stronger pull. Most of the characters are caricatures - the father who is unable to see past his beliefs, the mother who is sympathetic, but unable or unwilling to stand up to her husband, school teachers who are en masse unable to detect any problem with the boy beyond laziness and truancy. There is the handicapped smart kid, who has the heart of gold, the over achieving older brother, and finally of course the character of Aamir Khan - the idealistic substitute teacher who coincidentally had the same life story as the child at the center of the movie.

The story and characters all have a fairy tale quality - everybody is sketched in black or white until the resolution when everybody is redeemed and all is fine and dandy with the world. The climax involves a group painting contest to which most of the teachers arrive reluctantly, but, to a person, love the whole thing and leave with the commitment to take further lessons. I use the word 'climax' loosely since it is obvious from the moment the contest is announced as to what is about to happen. In a transparent ploy to add some tension, they even have the kid arrive late to the contest - there is much "Where is Ishaan?" "Has anybody seen Ishaan?" etc, but nothing much comes of it. The boy shows up eventually and starts painting and we learn nothing about his prior absence. There is at least one bothersome factual error - the character of Aamir Khan cites Da Vinci's use of mirror writing as another case of a creative mind who had problems with the use of language. This is bogus since Da Vinci wrote plenty of stuff in straight text and while theories abound about his reasons for using mirror text, none of them border on dyslexia as a cause. This is pretty poor for somebody (Aamir Khan) who has the reputation of being a perfectionist.

I do recognize that the making of this movie has cast more light on the insensitivity to "special needs" children and in general, it is better that this movie has been made than if it were not. However, there is no excusing the fact that the director took the easy way out in delivering the message: the story would have been that much more powerful if the child did not have such obviously above average talent and was not surrounded by such a cast of uncaring family and teachers. But then, he also wants people to watch the movie.