Recently I heard of Naseeruddin Shah's opinions on the actors in the Bollywood. He found Dilip Kumar to be somebody who did not really contribute to the 'art' of film making. He felt that Rajesh Khanna, who set the superstar trend, was an extremely mediocre and poor actor who lacked intellectual sharpness. In his opinion, Bacchan does not have a 'great' film to his credit. Luckily for him, Shah Rukh escaped such scathing remarks!
No, I do not think that it is the gripe of the 'sour grapes' variety. Naseeruddin is himself undoubtedly a talented and a superior actor. It indeed is true, however, that hereabouts glamour and/or groupism matter more, and not only in the cinema world.
True, good looks or mannerisms do not make an actor. None could thus measure the stature of a Balraj Sahani or an Om Puri, right? These actors may not be handsome the 'chocolate hero' way. They ARE, however the real actor material. They literally live the role so much so that the spectator forgets the individual, and remembers the character, the role the actor attempted.
Such a discussion opens up many other related questions, too. Who is better? An actor in a film or a theater artist? In my opinion, it is the theater artist, who is responding not to the camera; rather he is someone who enjoys an immediate response of the spectators. A film is not an active space that way. Spectators are responding to a series of images/photos selected/organised by the editor/director duo. The theater artist does not have such a luxury of a re-take, right?
During such discussions, I always feel like bowing down to our 'sangeet natak' artists. In those musicals, they looked nice, acted well, sang superbly, conveyed a socially relevant message through a psychologically believable/convincing theater piece. Why, many amongst them, author/actor/director/singer rolled in to one, sensitised the spectators against the cruelties of the coloniser during the decades leading to the Indian Independence.
Yet another category I find extremely interesting is that of the child artists. How to convince an innocent that the make-believe world is both unreal yet real? May be, that is why most of them are precocious, nay, pretty pretentious. Adult mentalities in tiny bodies they indeed are!
Do you, however, want to know my favourite most actor? Have you guessed who this secret hero(ine) is? Well, in my opinion, it is the common ordinary (wo)man who plays countless roles, wears many a masks, whose lines are not scripted, and yet are lively, and who is a puppet controlled by a superior power, be it god, destiny, the societal paradigms, and what have you! This actor may not be a larger-than-life hero, but sure is the most genuine of them all, often unsung, unrewarded, not praised enough for a pure n powerful performance!
Pratima@ Can we hence conclude that a good actor is comfortable in his own skin, and wears without a grumble the shoe, no magical slipper in any way, however much it may pinch!
No comments:
Post a Comment