Movie Review: PK
Director: Rajkumar Hirani
Year: 2014
Language: Hindi
Verdict: Average
I remember part of a poem I studied as part of my curriculum in school, it went like this-
“মানুষ-ই দেবতা গড়ে , তাহারই কৃপার পরে,
করে দেব মহিমা নির্ভর “ — চাঁদ সদাগর, কাশীরাম দাস
It meant, we humans created god and his power relies on our generosity.
If one can take a look back in history, one will find that god was invented as a result of fear. Most of the civilizations created their gods based upon the natural forces, which were unpredictable and can not be controlled. All the natural elements like, wind, rain, sea, fire were our first gods. And then came the god-men and their religions. The natural elements got replaced with names of sadhus, gurus, prophets, holy-men and we divided ourselves into groups, communities, pure blooded and muggles.
Before I got a chance to watch PK, I had heard this movie asked a few questions. I had a feeling that these questions will be superficial without penetrating deep. Although, in today’s world, asking these superficial questions also takes guts and I felt this movie did a good job.
PK, just like its predecessor Kanji Lalji from ‘Oh My God’ asked questions about human behaviors about empty rituals. I found the only difference between these two movies were, ‘Oh My God’ was more concentrated on one religion where PK tried to cover most of the prime ones.
Although, the ideas presented in this movie may be pressing for a religious person, who has never even thought of asking a single ‘why?’. As an atheist I felt a little bit more depth would have been interesting. Deeper than just questioning ‘wrong numbers’ but about the mere existence of a number.
An intelligent (had to be, they reached us before we found them) alien life-form comes to earth and gets caught-up with god as a supreme force of universe, I found that kind of far-fetched. Anyways for the greater good I can overlook this particular flaw. However, at the end the movie came down to the relationship with India and Pakistan, that was so very typical ;) !
Anyways, it was a good watch.
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