MOVING IMAGES
Where are the actors?
VIJAY NAIR
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Yesteryear stars catered to the audience; today’s stars are more worried about their brands. And it shows in their performances.
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The present generation of actors don’t have to wait too long before being asked to prove their mettle before the camera.
Yesterday and today: “Lucky Oye…” (above) is more about image than performance than “Zanjeer” (below).
They were all actors before destiny willed them into stars. Amitabh Bachchan may have short-changed his talent in the middle years of his career but we knew his worth, thanks to an early “Anand” and “Namak Haram”. Even the ini
tial commercial outings in “Deewar” and “Zanjeer” belonged to the actor and not the image. Some four decades later Bachchan can still surprise us with a quirky turn in “Cheeni Kum”. Shahrukh Khan came a good two generations later and while we know he can ham like there is no tomorrow, we are chastened by the knowledge of his early performances in “Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na” and the woefully underrated “Maya Memsaab”. In recent years, we have been reintroduced to the actor through “Swades” and “Chak De India”.
Rekha may be our answer to Michael Jackson, but who can undermine her considerable talent: from the rape victim in “Ghar” to the tragic poet-courtesan in “Umrao Jaan”, from the avenging angel in the commercial “Khoon Bhari Maang” to a masterful interpretation of the modern Draupadi in Benegal’s “Kalyug”. Madhuri Dixit was a dance director’s delight for pushing the envelope as far as heaving bosoms are concerned, but her searing intensity could burn the screen right from her “days”. She acted like she danced, with utmost conviction in the material she was asked to translate on screen. It is impossible to overlook her luminous performances in “Mrityudand” and Bhansali’s garish “Devdas”.
Thanks to the current confusion brewing in the Mumbai film industry, the present generation of actors don’t have to wait too long before being asked to prove their mettle before the camera. No one knows what works any more. We live in strange times and directors think they can make actors out of John Abraham and Katrina Kaif.
Potential but patchy
“New York”, the year’s biggest success so far, is one of the most uneven films to grace the marquee. Uneven not in terms of being patchy; it is, after all, a product from the Yash Raj factory of gloss. The script has potential. The director seems to have done his job with a certain perspective, intelligent in terms of craft and compelling in terms of execution. But there is not one performance that can be termed memorable. The film is about the victims of 9/11. Not those who perished in the tragedy but those who were caught in the paranoid aftermath. Director Kabir Khan focuses on just four characters to tell this tragic tale of persecution. The actors are expected to dig into the bare bone narrative and flesh out their characters. They never manage to do that. Even the redoubtable Irrfan Khan is content to play to the gallery.
“New York” is not the first film to be betrayed by its performers in recent times. Two other notable inclusions in the same category are Zoya Akthar’s “Luck by Chance” and Dibakar Banerjee’s “Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye”; works that were once again high on vision and concept, but faltered in execution. With skilled actors, these films could have been masterpieces.
In case of “Luck by Chance” the debutante director, Zoya Akhtar, has to take part of the blame. She sets out to tell the story of two wannabes out to compromise in order to make it big in the film industry. The man succeeds and the woman fails and the film makes the mistake of redeeming the loser at the expense of the winner. It is particularly painful to hear the woman spouting feminism as the end credits roll. Despite the directorial limitations, the film could have worked as an insider’s take on the film industry with a solid premise. Thousands throng to Mumbai every day with showbiz dreams, the ones who make it need to have luck on their side. It certainly explains why Jeetendra was so successful. Farhan Akthar may never see that kind of success, but as an actor he comes pretty close. Where is the desperate hunger in his performance that characterises those who come from nowhere and make a mark in ruthless showbiz? He didn’t even have to look too far for inspiration. Shahrukh Khan, playing himself in the film, continues to carry that edginess in his real life persona despite all the success he has achieved.
Konkana Sen Sharma doesn’t fare much better. Since she comes with the additional baggage of being a “serious actor,” her performance jars even more. (It is rather intriguing nobody protested about the accent she put on for “Mr. and Mrs. Iyer”. Talk about reinforcing silly stereotypes about South Indians!) Konkana doesn’t seem to realise the reference point for her character in “Luck By Chance” ought to have been Rakhi Sawant but her Sona is unfortunately more Bengali intellectual than struggling starlet.
Ambitious venture
Dibakar Banerjee’s pungent “Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye” came on the heels of his snazzy debut “Khosla ka Ghosla”. The second venture was much more ambitious. The tale of a protagonist wronged by almost everyone in his journey to become a criminal was a cross between a native “Muqaddar ka Sikandar” albeit with a dash of realism and a Hollywood “Catch Me If You Can”. Curiously enough you come out of watching the film missing the maverick genius Ranvir Shorey. He was so much more effective in a similar role in “Mitwa” than Abhay Deol is as Lucky is with his innate upper crust sophistication that the performance does nothing to conceal.
The actors of yesteryears catered to the audience. The stars of today are worried about their endorsement deals. They embrace their image and are in a hurry to turn into Brands. And therein hangs a tale.
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