“I found it so beautifully done”: Aamir Khan names two of his favourite movies
While there’s always a degree of vanity to any actor remaking one of their favourite movies, Aamir Khan was a big enough star to realise that putting a localised spin on a cultural juggernaut wasn’t a risk worth taking unless the end justified the means.
After all, he didn’t earn the nickname of ‘Mr. Perfectionist’ for taking a lackadaisical approach to his job, with Khan’s understanding of cinema and ability to develop projects that appealed to the widest possible audience, making him one of Indian cinema’s biggest stars and most bankable performers.
Ghajini, 3 Idiots, Dhoo 3, PK, and Dangal all broke box office records with Khan taking top billing in each one of them, while he’s also an established screenwriter, producer, and television personality. Still, despite being made with an entirely different culture in mind, mounting a remake of such a well-known and iconic Hollywood movie presented its own set of challenges.
Under the direction of Robert Zemeckis and with Tom Hanks in the lead role, Forrest Gump raced to almost $700million at the box office and won five Academy Awards including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Actor’, with the film making such an impression on Khan that not only did he call it one of his favourites, but he even purchased the rights so he could remake it.
“Around 14 years ago, Atul Kulkarni – who is the writer of this adaptation – and I were talking one night,” Khan shared per Film Companion. “He asked me, ‘What is your favourite film?’, and I said Forrest Gump is one of them. Somehow, we got talking about this film and then the night got over. He went home, and I forgot about it. Two weeks later, he called me and said, ‘I have written a screenplay for you.'”
The end result was 2022’s Laal Singh Chaddha, with Khan playing the lead role and producing. That’s one way of paying tribute to a personal favourite, but the same can’t be said of the other movie he holds dearest, if only because it’s a documentary.
Khan revealed Malik Bendjelloul’s Oscar-winning Searching for Sugar Man as the other, with the odyssey of two fans seeking to determine whether or not Sixto Rodriguez was alive or dead and what happened to him if the latter was the case capturing the imagination of a multi-talented film and television figure, which was initially recommended to him by his then-wife.
Kiran Rao shared how she “immediately called up Aamir and told him that he had to watch the film” after seeing Searching for Sugar Man for the first time, and he was equally enthused as she was. Forrest Gump and a music doc might not have a great deal in common, but for Khan, they rank among the finest features he’s ever seen.
