With quotes from THE Amitabh Bachchan, Subhash K Jha focuses on R Balki’s brilliant Shamitabh, which was released 10 years ago.
R Balki’s third feature film is perhaps his most audacious cinematic journey yet. The writer-director takes the voice of Mr Bachchan (in other words, the voice of the nation) and puts it on Dhanush, that intelligent Tamil actor who is rapidly emerging as the inheritor to Kamal Haasan. It really can’t be any more audacious than this…though admittedly, there’s no telling what Balki would dare to do next.
Shamitabh is not just a homage to the great Bachchan baritone; it is also a magnificent ode to the theme of human mortality. The love of Filmistan runs across the plot in frenzied rhythms. The two principal actors play out their conjoined karmas with a passion that burns your soul. Mr Bachchan rages and towers over the proceedings as only he can. Is there no end to his brilliance? Dhanush’s synchronicity with the Big B, which is so crucial to the plot, proves him to be an actor with remarkable resources. Thankfully, like Balki, Dhanush is a Big B fan later, an honest artiste first. Akshara Haasan holds her own between the two seething, squabbling co-stars, though the sequence where she chastises both the men in a kindergarten class falls pretty flat. Not her fault. Akshara never allows us to know this is her first.
Amitabh Bachchan doesn’t touch alcohol in real life. For R Balki’s Shamitabh, which turned 10 this week, he had to play a certifiable boozer.
How difficult was that? “As difficult as playing a Don or doing a Deewaar or an Alzheimer stricken character from Black. One does not necessarily have to consume alcohol to be intoxicated. Life itself is an intoxication !!”
R Balki designed Shamitabh as an ode to Mr Bachchan’s voice.
Said Balki, “Beyond Bollywood, it’s the voice of the nation. And for the first time in his career, he’s lending his voice to another actor, Dhanush. There are so many actors who have tried to imitate his style of talking. He finally decided to give voice to another actor who plays a character that wants to sound like the best baritone in the country. Actually, Mr Bachchan has a double role in Shamitabh. The body and the voice. Then there is a third role where the body and voice come together.”
Added Mr Bachchan, “For me, my work is the most enjoyable and comforting experience. Challenges are there in each project that I have done and shall continue to be so. Shamitabh has been as challenging as Paa or any other that I have worked in. And working with Balki is a joy, simply because he keeps challenging me with roles that I may never have done before.”
What was it like for Mr Bachchan to share screen space with Dhanush and Akshara, both of whom are his unabashed fans?
He retorted, “Work ….when the camera starts is not relatable to fan worship or any other kind of worship that you imagine comes my way. It does not. When the director shouts ‘action’, we start to act. Mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, grandfather, fan worshipper, or any other gets thrown out of the window. Or, the set in this case!!”
Shamitabh opens yet another door to Balki’s creative resourcefulness. There are only three main characters in the film: the film-obsessed mute Danish, Amitabh Sinha(!!),the autumnal cauldron of discontent who gives voice to Danish’s dream, and the very cute assistant director Akshara (Akshara Haasan), who plays a reluctant and rather frail mediator between the two raging men. She is really not up to the task. But then, life never plays fair.
Given the inventive premise of the plot and the sheer charm of the three principal actors, Balki could have comfortably allowed the narrative to work itself out. Blessedly, there is no lazy writing in this powerful film. Almost every narrative twist is cleverer and wiser than it would outwardly seem. At times, you may think the film is trying to act smarter than it actually is, and in the process, it may seem as though the narrative is getting carried away with itself.
But no. Every action has a profound cause. There is a grand design behind every seemingly spontaneous movement in the plot. You may wonder why Amitabh, the embittered alcoholic actor with a voice that could move mountains, lives in the graveyard (with an entertaining sidekick-cum-confidante)…A bit of a metaphoric indulgence, you would say. But wait for the film’s stunning finale: death is indeed a grave matter, especially in lives that have seen better days.
Balki’s characters light up the present with their stubborn eccentricities. Not coincidentally, all the three path-breaking characters that Mr Bachchan has played in Balki’s films so far have been relentlessly stubborn characters. Going many steps ahead of his vain chef’s character in Cheeni Kum and the arrogant progeric boy-man in Paa, Mr Bachchan in Shamitabh is a raging volcano of ill-tempered defiance.
Early in the narrative, we are told (in that mesmerizing voice that plays the main lead in the plot) that once upon a time, The Voice had been rejected by not just the film industry but all popular mediums. This, as any Bachchan fan would tell you, is a fact from the superstar’s real life.
Balki is a Bachchan fan. He picks out many real-life incidents and character traits from Mr Bachchan’s life (for instance, that smirking monologue about why we choose ape Hollywood by calling our film industry ‘Bollywood’) to create a character whose splendid surliness sweeps across the plot’s canvas creating a man who has never quite come to terms with his failure and now suddenly gets one last chance to be famous as a wannabe superstar’s voice.
It’s a compelling premise transported to illuminating heights by the writer-director’s insight into human nature. Balki never flinches from looking at the darker zones of human nature. Yet, he likes to keep the surface amiable, gentle, and very viewer-friendly. His cinematographic ally P C Sreeram paints an almost Shakespearean autumnal ruin around Mr Bachchan’s character. Wisely the colour palate gets more eye-catching and vibrant when the camera is around Dhanush and Akshara, the wannabe star from rural Maharashtra who goes on to become, ahem, the first Marathi superstar of Bollywood.
