JOIN USAmitabh Bachchan, a dispassionate assessment
Amitabh Bachchan getting the Dadasaheb Phalke Award should come as no surprise, considering how long he has been in films, his strong presence in Indian cinema and how familiar his face is to the public.
But given his pre-eminence as a poster boy for Bollywood, the enormous number of films in which he has appeared or worked, he is actually under-represented in landmark films.
Male Indian film stars need to reinvent themselves since they are not associated with genres that have lives of their own. When the pertinent moment for a kind of performance — e.g. Dilip Kumar’s introspective presence in ‘Babul’ (1950), Dev Anand as the city slicker in ‘Baazi’ (1950) — passes, the star finds other kinds of roles; hence Dilip Kumar as the ebullient rustic in ‘Ganga Jumna’ (1961) and Dev Anand in ‘Johny Mera Naam’ (1970).
Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan are also unrecognisable today from their earliest roles.
Amitabh Bachchan, as everyone knows, attained stardom as the Angry Young Man created by Salim-Javed — ‘Deewaar’(1975), ‘Shakti’(1982), ‘Trishul’(1978) and ‘Muqaddar Ka Sikandar’ (1978). Alongside, he also did comic roles like in ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’(1977) but that persona cannot be termed successful.
In ‘Sholay’(1975), he was only one star among many and Dharmendra was a bigger draw at the time. Being gifted with a deep baritone voice, Amitabh is also remembered for the voice-over he provided in Satyajit Ray’s ‘Shatranj Ke Khiladi’(1977) and Ashutosh Gowariker’s ‘Lagaan’(2001).
Amitabh ruled Bollywood from the mid-70s to 90s but his career went into decline thereafter, when he entered politics, tried to enter the entertainment industry (ABCL) as a promoter
and failed, got into financial troubles.
It was, by his own admission, his presence in the hit TV show ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati (2000) that saved him. After that, he had several hits in older roles (‘Mohabbatein’, 2000) and made a comeback. He has won more than one National Award since then and has been praised for ‘Black’(2005), ‘Paa’(2009) and ‘Piku’(2015), in which he ‘impersonates’ rather than ‘acts’.
Impersonation is assuming mannerisms and imitating gestures without actually delineating character. His presence on the small screen endorsing products has also undermined his
acting career. Amitabh Bachchan has a commanding presence on the screen but one does not usually find him fulfilling expectations.
His performance in ‘The Great Gatsby’(2013) as Meyer Wolfsheim, an infamous gambler and match-fixer, praised in certain quarters, was a distinct disappointment. An actor over a
certain age does not even need to act since he has already acquired gravity; all he needs is to ‘be’. Amitabh in that performance over-exerted himself as the old scoundrel; it is as though he lacks confidence that he has become anything in himself in his old age; he needs the support of histrionics.
Amitabh Bachchan can be a good actor but he needs to play against someone else with a strong screen presence to pull himself up. If one were to recall his best roles, one could identify his performance opposite Dilip Kumar in ‘Shakti’as his best, even better than the one in ‘Deewaar’, since Dilip Kumar is mesmerising.
Another good performance was the one in ‘Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna’(2007) where he is cast opposite Shah Rukh Khan. One still recalls the dining room conversation between the
patriarch and his daughter-in-law’s lover, the key issue hinted at but not brought to the surface to become a moral confrontation. In both these films, he allows his presence to dominate
and does not try to ‘act’.
Amitabh Bachchan has, in summation, underperformed in cinema, given the advantages he has, like his physiognomy and his voice. Why this has been so can be debated upon but my own sense is that he does not esteem his vocation as much as he might. When he tried to get ahead in the mid-part of his career he did something else. Amitabh comes from a very cultured family. His father was a celebrated Hindi poet and his family was on good terms with the Gandhis. But there have been other cultured people in Bollywood and some of them (like Shashi Kapoor) tried to promote good cinema; Amitabh Bachchan has not involved himself thus. This lack of faith in the films he appears in has now become so chronic that in a film like ‘Piku’, Deepika Padukone’s relaxed performance upstages his own. Regardless of what one’s true opinion of the work one is doing, it would clearly be a good thing to respect it.
(The author is an author and well-known film critic)