Starring the Director

What’s common between a Karan Johar, a Farhan Akhtar, a Farah Khan, an Imtiaz Ali and a Rohit Shetty? Besides belonging to a breed that usually calls the shots behind the camera, they are nothing less than the very stars they direct. In a few days from now Rohit Shetty will host Khatron Ke Khiladi, the reality TV series that was previously anchored by Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn; Imtiaz Ali is more visible across TV channels than Randeep Hooda, the leading man of his new film Highway, Karan Johar is back with yet another season of Koffee With Karan and with the colossal success he has enjoyed as an actor in Bhaag Milhka Bhaag might just keep Farhan Akhtar from directing another film for a long time… never have been directors so busy in front of the camera.

In Hindi cinema most directors have traditionally towered over others. There have been showmen like Raj Kapoor, stalwarts such as K. Asif and Bimal Roy, auteurs in the form of Guru Dutt and Vijay Anand, and general larger than life personalities like Mehboob Khan or Kamal Amrohi but rarely did one get to see most of these attributes rolled into one. Back in the day a star’s mere presence was enough to get things buzzing and a big director’s name attached to the project only made it more appetizing whereas today, the director is not just as important as the stars to sell a film but in some cases it’s solely their billing that makes all the difference. It’s not like films were never sold on the name of the director in the past, case in point any Raj Kapoor directed film, but in an era where a film’s pre and/or post release publicity is possibly more essential than the content or the actors in it, the director has become the biggest draw in most films. Thanks to an informed audience largely in the context of a 24x7 media, the persona of a filmmaker is inseparable from the film he/ she makes and therefore it’s practically impossible to disassociate an Anurag Kashyap from the subjects he tackles. Similarly the schematics of, for the want of a better term, small-town India are an integral part of a Vishal Bhardwaj or a Tigmanshu Dhulia film much like the overwhelming arc of the human condition cannot not be a fragment of a Sanjay Leela Bhasali film. Perhaps that’s the reason a food and travel based TV show that also shares its name with Imtiaz Ali’s new release gets him and the leading lady, Alia Bhatt as guests as opposed to the ‘hero’ Randeep Hooda.

One of the reasons for this lush idolization of the director as the star could also be the increase in the number of personal stories filmmakers have been tackling. Although new Bollywood still continues to adhere to a somewhat typical Hindi cinema template, the tales seem to be less formulaic. If Farahan Akhtar would have attempted his Dil Chata Hai a decade or two before he wouldn’t have been allowed the visible sense of freedom as far as characters and situations went. The emergence of this rather rare quality in a system that seems to lack a limit to the commodification of film in general could very well be the thing that separates this generation of filmmakers from others.  Ergo, in a larger sense, the director, today, is truly the star of a film and this’s why more people are keen to experience a Raanjhana because of an Anand Rai and that’s why an Imtiaz Ali or an Anurag Kashyap bring truckloads more to Rockstar or a Dev D. than a Ranbir Kapoor or Abhay Deol could possibly convey.  The advantage of this phenomenon is that it makes possible a certain kind of films that otherwise would have been extremely difficult to get made- Swades, Pyar Ke Side Effects, Mithiya, Kahaani, Paan Singh Tomar, and Shanghai to name a few. From an art versus commerce aspect this line seems to be one that can make everyone- the filmmaker, the viewer and the trade- happy as nearly everyone gets what they want but there is a grave flip side as well.

The non-stop spotlight on the creators as against the wares and the baggage of filmmaker’s image runs the risk of overburdening the films they make- Saat Khoon Maaf, That Girl in Yellow Boots and Shanghai. While a Rockstar enjoys the shadow of Imtiaz Ali as an artist on Jordan, which propels the viewer to look beyond the ill structured screenplay and even the abject lack of reason for the protagonist’s angst, the seeming lack of apathy on Dibakar Banerjee’s part towards the proceedings fetters Shanghai. One of the better films in recent time, Shanghai is chillingly real and yet, the audience maintained a safe distance from it. Unwillingly to judge on behalf of his viewer, Banerjee’s coldness to what transpires in the film could have forced a similar reaction on the viewer’s part. In spite of the pitfalls this is more than just a good time to be a director.

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Second Shot

There are favorite films that you keep revisiting and then there are those that, well…you just end up watching a few times too many. These repeat viewings are something like unforced errors from tennis- compelled into revisiting a film they change the thought you knew the story.

I often revisit films I believed I wouldn’t bother about a second time around. Like for instance Tanu Weds Manu, yes, I now you were expecting something like Citizen Cane or Deewar but I’ll get to those in a bit, which I kind of enjoyed but the rather filmy and clamorous ‘third-act’ convinced me that once was enough. A few months later I ended up not only sitting through the whole thing again but this time around I enjoyed the enjoyable parts more and the climax wasn’t as laborious.

What had changed in the interim for me to enjoy Tanu Weds Manu as much as I did the second time around? Could it be that I knew an end was in sight and so it didn’t seem so arduous? I believe the effort one puts in a viewing a film in this day and age is directly proportional to the degree of liking that film. Taking out time, braving the traffic to reach the cinema hall, finding parking and finally shelling out an amount that could feed a family of raccoons for months, watching a film isn’t what it used. Thanks to the time that one invests in watching a film, the expectations become high and maybe that’s why anything halfway decent gets talked about as if the rules were being rewritten. Sometimes watching a new film for the first time a few months after its release and on DVD in the comfort of your home can make you as patient as the Count of Monte Cristo. Even the apparently weird and revolting stuff like No Smoking (okay, here I go again and no, I didn’t like it and yes, I have read Stephen King and Kafka so Anurag K’s logic doesn’t hold water for me and no, I will not revisit it) didn’t seem trouble me as much.

Watching a film again and seeing a different story could have to do with your frame of mind more than anything else. Dil Chahata Hai (DCH) is one film that I saw during its initial theatrical run and unlike many people I knew I couldn’t get myself to watch it for the second or third time. Half a decade later I saw it on TV and gave up midway. I shouldn’t have watched Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (QSQT) a day before DCH on TV and who knows I’d have sat through it. DCH is a film that is so dated even the first time around that sometimes you wonder why no one saw the regressive attitude of all the characters behind the snazzy hairdos and the flashy cars? By contrast QSQT is a film that might be 23 years old but it still looks fresh and real. In 1989 Mansoor Khan simply set the ageless Romeo-Juliet and in a Thakur clan and retold the done to death tale in a manner that Hindi commercial cinema hadn’t seen. The diminutive lass is as afraid of her authoritarian father as any Hindi film leading lady has been since the talkies but she still is her own person. Now contrast this with Preity Zinta’s character from DCH- a mute lamb that follows stupidity in the name of good manners. Rashmi’s friend Kavita (Shenaz Kudia), who taunts for being a Frankenstein of a father’s monster, never pushes her beyond a point and then goes all out to help her. Readily submitting to just about everything and everyone, Shalini in DCH has no friends and even her own inner child seems to have abandoned her!

Watching a classic is an entirely different ballgame. Many films that have existed for two decades or more automatically seem to be labeled classics. This is what the marketing machineries try- alter our perception of what ought to be measured as a classic and peddle their wares. Anything monochromatic and laden with bad acting and histrionics isn’t a classic. All Raj Kapoor films aren’t classics. Citizen Cane is a classic. The Killing is a classic. Tere Ghar Ke Saamne is a classic. A Touch of Evil is enjoyable watching but it ain’t a classic in that sense of the word; you get the drift, right?

A sure-shot test of a classic worthy of continued revisiting is the extent of cruelty of time. Time can be very rude towards films and many a times it simply kills a part of their relevance. Mother India is still a classic but decades have made its intensity slightly animated. A few days when I felt a shiver run down my spine at the end of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, I knew why the film has been consistently winning the tag of the 2nd Greatest Film Ever for years now. There is a great deal of datedness to the seminal classic but that’s got more to do with things like San Francisco of the 1950’s, the cars and the dressing sense more than anything else while in Mother India or Awara the age shows across the board.

A classic, a cult-classic, an under-rated gem, a disaster that time has been kind to…the reasons for revisiting a film don’t impact the viewing pleasure. It’s a nice way to (re)discover something that wasn’t there or finally notice something that’s been staring in the face for years, revisiting a films is always fun. It should be tried on a regular basis and much like dancing as if you don’t care who’s watching don’t shy away from films others wouldn’t get. Why else do you think I end up watching Govinda’s Sandwich every time I catch it while channel surfing!

© Gautam Chintamani, 2011

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Being Amitabh Bachchan

From being someone who could do everything when did Amitabh Bachchan become someone who wouldn’t stop at anything?

Most actors become successful, many become memorable, some become unforgettable and a few become legends….but there are only a handful who become icons. In the early 1990’s Amitabh Bachchan became his own victim. There was nothing left for him to prove…he won an award for Best Actor the year after he was awarded a lifetime achievement award by Filmfare. So he did the best thing he could- he took a sabbatical and grew a beard. Having seen a Marlon Brando fall to the unmentionable pits and resurrect himself in The Godfather, people believed the beard was an indication of things to come.

That wasn’t to be.

Bachchan returned to doing what he was good at- playing a character that had made him what he was. At 55 he still wanted to be the angry young man. It wasn’t that his audience wouldn’t recognize him as anything else; maybe Bachchan had forgotten being anyone else. For three years Bachchan believed in the likes of KC Bokadia and Mehul Kumar that he was the Mrityudata and Lal Baadshah but at 58 his mind rather than his body gave up on him. And in 1999 Aditya Chopra and prime time television saved him. Kaun Banega Crorepati and Mohabbatein revealed that acting one’s age is perhaps the most challenging role.

The Supporting Actor Filmfare for Mohabbatein was his third in the category but perhaps as important as the first one he got for Anand. Somewhere the wheel started a familiar journey. He found it easier to be himself…he didn’t mind not playing the lead and that was just fine with everyone. Rather Bachchan Ver 2.0 put an end to a steady career of Amrish Puri and Anupam Kher. If Bachchan could play the father or the older friend, the elder brother or the villain then who’s interested in anyone else.

Unlike most of the actors from ‘his’ generation, Amitabh Bachchan become busier with age and there isn’t a dent in his popularity. Some might argue that the body of work has taken a beating in the recent past but unlike Shashi Kapoor, Dharmendra or Vinod Khanna it’s a double whammy with Amitabh Bachchan- you can watch his angry older man thoda action, thoda Jackson avatar or simply rewind and enjoy the classics. 

Today, Bachchan is someone who does just about everything and is visible just about everywhere but once upon a time everything meant something else.

Some of Bachchan’s earliest roles ran the risk of being overtly melodramatic but the actor ensured that he never went overboard ever. In Anand Rajesh Khanna might have had the author-backed role yet Bachchan stood his own in front of a man for whom the term ‘superstar’ was coined. Bachchan’s reticent Dr Bhaskar Banerjee or Babu Moshai who silently watches Anand (Khanna), his patient and friend die, infused honesty in a role that could have been really filmy.  In Namak Haraam Bachchan’s Vikram, a spoilt rich brat urges Sonu (Rajesh Khanna), his poor friend, to infiltrate a Trade Union to teach the leader (AK Hangal) a lesson. The sheer range of emotions that he displays makes this one of Bachchan’s best performances. 

With Zanjeer, Bachchan became the Angry Young Man for the rest of his life but he continued with dramatic roles with great aplomb. In Abhimaan he played a super singer whose wife’s, a protégé of sorts, success becomes a thorn in his pride. In Deewar he depicted a character who locks himself up emotionally in order to become rich and yet cracks down when he mother abandons him for his nefarious ways. Trishul and Shakti saw him play son to men who commit crimes by being who they are. The illegitimate son of a business tycoon destroys the man who chose money over his mother and yet pines for the man’s approval (Trishul), the son who can’t forgive his policeman father for choosing to uphold the law over his safety (Shakti), Bachchan’s dramatic roles have influenced every actor worth their salt across generations. Later in Main Azaad Hoon he embodied the fictitious persona created by a journalist in order to sell her newspaper and years before Shah Rukh Khan in Darr, Bachchan played a silent lover who knows no boundaries in Parwana. 

Anyone who saw the lanky newcomer in Anand would never believe that he could portray the anger of inspector Vijay Khanna in Zanjeer. Had it not been for the few action scenes from Bombay To Goa, Salim-Javed wouldn’t have recommended Bachchan to Prakash Mehra and who knows what would have happened to the angry young man. Zanjeer paved the path for Bachchan to be a part of one of the greatest films ever made- Sholay. The curry-western had some of the best action seen on Indian screens and remains one of Bachchan’s greatest triumphs.  Don, Khoon-Pasina, Parvarish, Kala Patthar and Shaan are some of the other great Bachchan action films that Bachchan. 

In the 1990’s Bachchan returned to action after nearly a decade of one-man shows like Sharaabi, Mard and Lawaaris. Agneepath not only redefined the angry young man who wasn’t as young anymore but got him his first National Award as well. Aaj Ka Arjun, a film with no expectations, showed Bachchan could still deliver as the one man industry he had become and followed it up with Hum where director Mukul Anand gave him his first serious shot at playing a character who ages on screen after Kabhie-Kabhie. Post the abysmal Shahenshah, Toofan, Jadugar, Ganga Jamuna Saraswati these films somewhere kept the persona alive.

Chupke-Chupke’s harassed English literature professor who is forced to pretend to be his own best friend, a renowned Botanist, Bachchan forayed into comedy and revealed a side of him many couldn’t have imagined. Bachchan’s comedy can be categorized into the Hrishkesh Mukherjee School of and others, which prominently featured Manmohan Desai. The comedy tracks of Hera-Pheri and Khoon Pasina slowly made way for one of Bachchan’s most memorable characters in Amar Akbar Anthony, the culmination of Manmohan Desai’s lost and found formula that finally got Bachchan his first Best Actor Filmfare award after three misses. 

In the 1980’s Bachchan’s affable conman in Mr. Natwarlal and the small time thief desperate to kidnap a businessman’s son in Do Aur Do Paanch along with bumbling village lad who loves his daddu more than anything in Namak Halal, were fun and even successful but aren’t a patch on Chupke-Chupke or Amar Akbar Anthony. 

With Kabhie-Kabhie Bachchan finally got a chance to play a near conventional romantic lead. Spanning two generations Kabhie Kabhie is the story of a poet who gives up writing after the love of his life leaves him and becomes a businessman. Cast against type before he truly became a superstar, an icon, Kabhie-Kabhie is one the few Bachchan films where he never really overshadows the rest. He exhibits a rare blend of insider-outsider in the film where he keeps the internal anguish of the poet he plays simmering and withdraws just enough. Silsila is another film where the romantic Bachchan is on full display but the film’s purported eerie resemblance to the actor’s real life plays too heavily on the proceedings and in spite of everything Silsila ends up falling short. 

Bachchan has done 60 films since his last comeback in 1997 and every now and then he teases us just enough with a Cheeni Kum or a Khakhee to show how it used to be but for that you have survive the likes of Aladin or The Last Lear and endure the misfires, no pun intended, like Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag.

Image- www.studioharcourt.com

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