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