PIYUSH ROY
Raje Bauji (Sanjay Mishra), in Aankhon Dekhi will not believe in anything until he sees it through his own eyes or experiences it with his own senses. He sits outside a zoo cage provoking a lazing tiger to roar, because he has always read and heard that a tiger roars, but has not seen one roaring with his ‘own eyes’. This insistence to believe only what’s ‘aankhon dekhi’ takes him through a range of experiences and personal relationship tangles in a bitter-sweet comedy that only a seasoned actor could convincingly pull through. The grossly underrated Sanjay Mishra gives one of the year’s finest performances in any acting category, but come the award season starting January, I doubt his part will even get a ‘Critics Choice’ nomination. Raje Bauji is no less impacting than some of the most memorable post 2000 common man parts like Naseeruddin Shah in A Wednesday, Rishi Kapoor in Do Dooni Chaar or Paresh Rawal in Oh My God. But then, ‘he’ happens in a small indie wonder that came and went without much marketing hoopla.
2014 abounds with many such performance gems, scattered across categories and genres, hit and flop, good and average films, in lead and bit parts, across hero-heroine and supporting actor accomplishments. Let me share few such acts that may or may not get listed in the many film award ceremonies that are going to unfold now, but they did make many movie memories for anyone who engaged with films with a little more interest, than a mere time pass passive watching.
Environment activist and Hollywood veteran Martin Sheen as Warren Anderson, (Union Carbide chief at the time of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy), explores some empathetic counter perspectives around the tragedy’s most ‘vilified’ villain in the year-end docudrama Bhopal A Prayer of Rain that asks – ‘were local politicians and Indian managers of the company any less responsible for a tragedy that the city is yet to recover from?’
Possibilities around that ‘grey’ aspect in every human character, incidentally, is the essence of two ‘odd-ball’ caricatures in Finding Fanny, taken to a delicious level of zaniness by veterans Pankaj Kapur and Dimple Kapadia as the no holds barred Don Pedro and Rosie Eucharistica. They are flawed, self-centred, egotistic and frequently obnoxious in their interaction with fellow human beings, and yet you fall and feel for them. Just like you savour every coming of Amrita Singh’s ‘loud and perpetually incorrect’ Punjabi mother act in Two States or Govinda as ‘Single-Screen Superstar’ Armaan almost parodying his own desi stereotype in otherwise ‘the most boring onscreen romance of the year,’ Saif-Ileana’s Happy Ending! Each of the above parts deserves an award in their respective acting sub-categories – as fabulous supporting actor achievements – but will they even get a nomination?
More likely to get that nomination nod however is Juhi Chawla for her superbly sadistic Sumitra Devi in Gulaab Gang. Her role’s long term impact may have dimmed courtesy the film’s overall failure to make an engaging possibility riveting, but it was a no less bravura performance in its ability to tempt a repeat, only to see a single actor’s ‘mean’ scenes. I am quite tempted to include Aamna Sharif’s nagging Marathi housewife, Sulochana Mahadkar, from Ek Villain too. Ritesh Deshmukh may be the one playing a serial killer in the film, but no scene of his gore spill was chillier than his shrewish onscreen wife’s constant ruthless jibes that did make his flips from sanity to sadism plausible.
The crowning glory among the year’s complex parts however has to be shared by Kangana Ranaut’s charmingly over-the-top, trigger-happy goon turned politician, Alka Singh in Revolver Rani, and Tabu’s multi-layered Ghazala Meer in Haider. They, along with Vidya Balan’s bindaas Bobby Jasoos on unusual investigation assignments in the nosey gullis of Hyderabad and Parineeti Chopra’s ‘quirky’ Dr. Meeta Solanki in Hasee Toh Phasee are ample reason to celebrate 2014 as one of the most diverse, challenging and rewarding years for women actors in recent times. Not to forget Rani Mukherji (Mardani), Priyanka Chopra (Mary Kom), Deepika Padukone (Finding Fanny) and Kangana again (in Queen). I won’t be surprised if some of these roles make it to the year’s best actress nominations; true conquest however will be in having one of these actresses actually taking home that award, ideally Tabu or Kangana (if not for Revolver Rani, Queen for sure!)
2014 also was a year that saw some very interesting male parts surface, mostly outside of the mainstream. As Bollywood’s reigning stars, the Khans (exception Aamir Khan in PK), the Kapoors, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn and Ranbir Singh either disappointed or repeated themselves in predictable action hero parts, the hope in talent was reaffirmed by an eclectic range of actors, kids to veterans, in some truly uncommon parts – Randeep Hooda as a kidnapper with a conscience in Highway, Amitabh Bachchan as a ‘returned from heaven’ ghost contesting elections in Bhoothnath Returns, Sharib Hashmi and Inaamulhaq as diehard Bollywood fans habiting a not uncommon but utopian space of friendship between India and Pakistan called Filmistaan, Nawazzuddin Siddiqui’s felt take of a no less passionate, aspiring filmmaker from Bollywood’s Category-C fringe industries (in Miss Lovely) and rising ‘kid’ star, Partho Gupte’s Arjun Harishchandra Waghmare, a surprise underdog champion from Vidharbha’s suicide ridden farmlands who discovers and hones his skating skills off Mumbai’s mean streets in Hawaa Hawaai.
May the best performances shine!