Taare Zameen Par is Aamir Khan’s gift to every child with a powerful message for parents and a compassionate look at special children like dyslexics. This is a beautiful movie sensibly made to appeal to all sorts of audience across all strata of society.
It touches a chord in your heart and connects with everybody. No one is left out. It does not matter if you are a parent, uncle, aunt, teacher, brother or sister. It’s sure to move you.
The story revolves around a young dyslexic boy Ishaan Awasthi, misunderstood and unhappy at school because he has difficulty learning and concentrating in class. His parents and teachers consider him to be a less gifted and very undisciplined student. The child is then very often punished both at school and at home. Unable to bear his indiscipline any longer, his father decides to enroll him in a boarding school, where the child is even more unhappy.
It is then that a new teacher, Ram Shankar Nikumbh, enters the scene and changes Ishaan's life forever. Instead of punishing him for his mistakes, Nikumbh takes the time to understand Ishaan's struggles and helps him discover his hidden talents in painting and art. Together, they work to help Ishaan overcome his challenges and find the confidence to succeed.
Unlike other teachers who follow definite norms in educating children, he makes them think out of books, outside the four walls of the classroom and paint their imaginations. He takes effort to understand the kid and his problems. He makes everyone realize that he is not abnormal but a very special child with talents of his own.
With time, patience and care he succeeds in boosting the confidence level of the kid by helping him overcoming his inabilities and re-discover his lost confidence. A scene where the boy wins the drawing competition and where he reluctantly comes ahead to receive his prize in front of the whole school will leave you moist-eyed.
The film not just succeeded in making every child a hero but actually helped us see a child in ourselves. Just like no man is perfect no matter what position he commands in the society, every child with both their ability and inabilities is special and talented in their own way.
In a nutshell, Taare Zameen Par serves as a wake up call for every parent or parent-to-be. The film has a strong message to all those parents who are always in competition looking for a winner and to all teachers, to make education a fun process rather than a boring exercise where a student is burdened with the expectations of getting good grades.
The film changes our world and also change the way we look at our kids! The movie isn’t just about a child suffering from dyslexia and his challenges, it’s also about how parents get carried away by today’s competitive world and fail to understand their child’s dreams and nurture their inborn talents.
Taare Zameen Par deals with the subject of childhood and the difficulties that dyslexic children can face at school. I admit that I did not know this disease, I vaguely knew the word dyslexia, without knowing what it really means.
Taare Zameen Par is a moving and heartwarming film that intelligently and sensitively addresses the challenges faced by children with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.
Little Darsheel Safary's performance as Ishaan is remarkably accurate, capturing both the vulnerability and strength of this character. Similarly, Aamir Khan brings depth and nuance to his role as a teacher, showing how a mentor can make a decisive difference in a child's life.
The film is divided into two parts: the first shows us the young child facing his challenges, despite being otherwise intelligent and alert. He is very interested in his surroundings, nature, animals with whom he can easily bond… The director's use of cartoons allows us to visualize and understand the child's difficulties and world. For example, seeing letters of the alphabet dancing and flying allows us to understand what this child is up against, but also to see how fertile his imagination is.
The second part sees the arrival of the new teacher, who will change this child's life. The film takes its time. Too much in fact. It suffers from a problem of rhythm. The director sets the context at length to make us understand the kid's academic difficulties, his rejection or exclusion by a society that ignores what he has. All this aims to make us understand why this boy full of life and imagination gradually fades away and withdraws into himself at boarding school.
This should have been reduced. Especially since on the contrary the second part, much more successful from the appearance of the pedagogue teacher played by Aamir Khan, is too fast and sometimes quickly dispatched. In this part, we would have liked to see more scenes developed to understand how the school accepts and switches to the atypical teaching methods of this strange teacher.
The director also sometimes overdoes it in emotion, especially in the three successive endings. The first one, the one with the paintings, is perfect because I found it so pretty. The following ones are less successful and could have been condensed.
It is a family film that never takes the viewer for idiots. The message that children should be allowed to live as they are is universal. A society needs artists and dreamers as much as it needs mathematicians or engineers. The development of a child must be the priority.The film is a critique of the Indian school system which rejects differences and ignores the existence of certain concentration disabilities.
It is true that in cinema, this theme of people, children or adults, having difficulties, who come up against the traditional education system, or against integration into society, and who are saved by a person who will take the time to listen to them and understand them is not new. This film reminded me for example of "Dead Poets Society", or "The Awakening", or "Rain Man", and others.
But "Taare Zameen Par" is a must-see film for all those who seek to understand the difficulties that dyslexic children can face. It is a film that speaks of hope, perseverance and empathy, and which shows how love and support can make a decisive difference in the life of a child (or an adult).
Considered one of the most demanding actor-producers in Indian cinema, Aamir Khan signs with "Taare Zameen Par" his first film as a director, and the result lives up to the artist's reputation: a pure masterpiece, full of grace and poetry that speaks intelligently about childhood and a handicap: dyslexia. By turns light, deep, moving.
Aamir Khan's film is a pure joy for the cinephile, especially since the songs are magnificent, the general aesthetic is sublime, and the director also delivers a superb acting performance in the role of a teacher who will restore confidence to the little hero, a role that is reminiscent of that of Robin Williams in "Dead Poets Society". A masterpiece, and another proof of the diversity of Hindi cinema!
