Now Watching: My Name Is Khan

I have watched this film countless times already, thanks to our cable subscription! And whenever I watch it, it never fails to touch my heart. Nakakaiyak. The first time I've seen it, I thought it was based from a true story, hindi pala. But for me, it's a beautiful film.

According to Wikipedia, My Name Is Khan is a 2010 Indian drama film and was the highest-grossing Bollywood film overseas at the time. Within four weeks, the film crossed US$12 million mark in India and became the first film of 2010 to do so and is the highest grossing film released in February. In the overseas markets, the film grossed US$23 million. It is currently the 10th highest grossing Bollywood film with a worldwide gross of US$34 million.

Source

It's a story about a Muslim child named Riswan (Risvan) Khan. He grew up with his brother Zakir and mother Razia in India. Risvan is different from other kids, he has certain gifts like repairing mechanical things. Midway thru the movie, it was revealed that the reason why he's like that was because he has Asperger's Syndrome, an autism disorder wherein there is a significant difficulty in social interaction. He doesn't like the color yellow and his behavior changes everytime he sees anything in that color. When their mother died, Zakir, despite his resentment from his brother because their mother was giving him special attention when they were young, still brought Rizvan with him in the US and worked for his company. Risvan met a beautiful hair dresser named Mandira. Mandira has a child from her first marriage. Her son's name was Sameer. They later got married despite of Zakir's hostility to the match. They had a happy marriage.

When the September 11 Tragedy happened in the US, their happy marriage got disrupted. People were accusing Muslims as terrorists, the Khan family included. Sameer was bullied in school, had a bad fight with his school mates and unfortunately died. Mandika was devastated and demanded Risvan to go away. Shattered, she told Risvan that for her to accept him again, he has to go and tell the people of the US and the President that his name is Khan and he is not a terrorist. It was only a sarcasm because she blames Risvan for Sam's death because his name is "Khan" and he's a Muslim. (On a lighter scene, Risvan would always say that "Khan" is pronounced from the epiglottis.)

However, Risvan took it seriously and went on his journey but always fails to meet the President. He went thru a lot of challenges along the way. In the end, he succeeded and cleared his name. Mandira and Risvan went back together again.

The challenges that he met really touched my heart in a lot of ways. It's really heart warming. I opted not to write the entire plot here for the benefit of those who are curious about the movie and would like to watch it. I can absolutely say that it's a must-watch. There were some funny moments because of Risvan's antics, too. I laughed and cried (not at the same time ha) while watching the film. :-)

For those who would like to read the entire plot though, here's the link I found in Wikipedia.

For those who have watched the film, did you like it too? Do you have any other must-watch movie to share? :-)