Taare Zameen Par (Stars on Earth)

Synopsis: 8-year-old Ishaan (Darsheel Safary) is a wildly imaginative kid who goes about enjoying the small things in life — minnows in a fountain, for example — but failing academically. He cannot study or focus, something that leads to him being picked on and knocked around by bullies, his teachers and even his father. Eventually it gets so bad that Ishaan’s father ships him off to boarding school, where Ishaan finally encounters someone — teacher Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir Khan) — who takes the time to understand.

I struggled a lot to write this post because much of what I felt and thought about the movie is difficult to put into words. Even after writing this, I've struggled with whether to post it because I don't know if what I seem to have expressed is what I wanted to. (To give you some idea of this struggle, I watched this movie before my resolution to drop a dependence on subtitles.)

Perhaps I should preface much of this post by saying I am the sister of an 8-year-old with learning disabilities. My youngest brother has auditory processing disorder (sometimes called “dyslexia for the ears”) and, yes, a form of dyslexia. Excepting time, place and parental compassion level, my brother could be Ishaan.

So at many points in the movie, I couldn’t help but see my brother in Ishaan. But at other times, I saw anything but.

Unlike Ishaan, my brother is vibrant and outgoing. He is bold, hyperactive. My brother (despite his auditory processing issues) does not avoid talking like Ishaan does; in fact, my brother will excitedly talk your ear off at the slightest provocation. And if you don’t notice he pronounces V’s as B’s and don’t ask him to read anything, you might never know he had a learning disability.

Me, my brother James and my sister.

Coming from a background with such a similar but different child, part of me wonders what was the need to make Ishaan  so isolated? “Different” does not need to equal troubled. Nor does it equal loner. Not even academic failure (so to speak) equals these things; plenty of kids who don’t do well in school have plenty of friends. Yet while Nikumbh argues for his academic inclusion in a regular school (and I’ll come back to that later), Ishaan is very clearly socially segregated from the rest of his classmates — except the boy who has a physical disability.

And the film’s idea of ultimately including Ishaan (socially) is to put him on a pedestal above the rest by having his classmates all applaud his winning the art contest and then putting his face on the yearbook. While celebrating Ishaan’s talent is great, that is not inclusion.

Lovely painting. Lekin inclusion nahin hai.

 

Yes, every kid is different and special — including the kid who does stare off into space as he imagines another world in his mind, the kid who does not have a disability, the kid who is goofy with no root cause, the kid who secretly struggles with not understanding. While it endeavors to be, this film — with the tagline “Every child is special” — doesn’t feel like a true celebration of children of every sort. Where is the celebrating for the fact that the physically disabled Rajan is always academically tops? It earns a passing mention only because one of Ishaan’s teachers feels the need to subject him to Ranjan’s positive academic influence. Where is the celebrating for the fact that Ishaan’s older brother Yohaan excels at tennis? There is, I believe, less than none: Yohaan fails in a major match while Ishaan is left at boarding school.

And what are the odds that Ishaan is the only one in his entire school — in both schools — who has a learning difficulty? Practically nonexistant. Dyslexia alone is believed to affect 5 to 10 percent of any given population. I think it would have been possible to celebrate Ishaan’s triumph without making him the lonely outcast only one who suffers from this problem.

Nooooot your best look, Aamirji.

Part of me is also dismayed that Aamir still has to play the hero — because he does. While Ishaan may be the focus, it is Nikumbh’s swooping in — wearing a clown costume no less — that saves the day. (Though while I was bothered by the heroicness of it all, no one can hate Aamir because he always performs wonderfully.) It is his efforts that lead to a happy resolution. Nikumbh (who also admits to being dyslexic and therefore like Ishaan) is the only positive effort in the whole film, something I couldn’t help but be bothered by.

Somehow everyone in Ishaan’s life, despite noticing some of these problems for years, hasn’t even taken the time or effort to ask a question about why he’s having trouble in school. Even his mother, who is portrayed as compassionate, never seems to ask why he has trouble in school. Or even utter that phrase so common of mothers: “What’s wrong?” Are we really to believe not just his teachers (who aren’t paid to care/other excuses about poor teachers) but also the people who love him are all that oblivious? Not, I mean, oblivious to the dyslexia itself because it may be hard to pick out; but oblivious to the fact that there are problems not likely caused by mere laziness.

Okay, yes, let’s assume for the sake of peace in filmidom that they are all utterly oblivious. Still, it would’ve been nice just to see someone else care, even if they didn’t know how to help Ishaan.

Although on that note, it was incredibly satisfying to watch Nikumbh tear down Ishaan’s father for pretending to care while not really acting on any genuine care for his child.

Now, all of that complaining aside, there were things about the movie that I would love to praise.

Aamir apparently has only one way to talk to kids.

One would be the pretty remarkable performance of the child artist himself. The young one more than holds his own among all-around solid in the film, dazzling as a boy filled with quirks and wonder. One has to wonder if anyone could have brought Ishaan to life more than he did. I somehow doubt it.

Another is the pretty accurate depiction of dyslexia as we know it. Like I said, I couldn’t help but see my own dyslexic brother in Ishaan. (I understand several scholars who are much more familiar with this than the average person also praised this aspect of the film.) The one nitpick in that is that Ishaan seems to also suffer from dyscalculia, which is unfortunately lumped into his dyslexia though they are in fact different.

Another is understanding the issue itself enough to argue for academic inclusion (even if, as aforementioned, social inclusion seems to have escaped the filmmakers). Inclusion is a battle hard-fought across many if not all school systems. The state of Florida (where I live) just defined “inclusion” in a new law to combat the very issue that no one knows exactly what it means.

Yet another is that the film really isn't just about a boy with dyslexia. It has something of an overarching feel of commentary on the rat race (if you will), on such a crushing drive for achievement that no one stops to smell the roses (or in Ishaan's case, paint the space ships). Though I do have something of an issue with that as well considering that even Ishaan's artistic expression is put to the achievement race in the end, forced to be judged and ranked.

But anyway...

The filmmakers earn many brownie points for the willingness and know-how when taking on such an issue. But part of me hoped that a real problem would have been treated more realistically in other regards, such as the fact that Ishaan wouldn’t be the only dyslexic and struggling kid in the school. But if the film hadn’t been made and made so well, I would never have been able to voice such particular complaints about how it compares with reality.