Subhash K Jha celebrates Varun Dhawan’s career for his birthday with this special feature. When was the last time Varun Dhawan gave a stand-out performance? Birthday boy Varun Dhawan has had a lot of hits in his 16-year career. But the stand-out performances have been rare. Check out this list of his best.
1. Badlapur (2015) was one performance that Varun should be proud of. This was Varun’s first thrust at something more substantial and realistic than the fluff stuff he had done till then. Director Sriram Raghavan had an older actor in mind to play a man grieving and raging for his slain family. Varun insisted on doing the role. Varun Dhawan, a bit raw around the edges, is nonetheless acutely effective as the grieving family man, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, flawlessly flamboyant as the sly villain who has willy-nilly destroyed the hero’s life, together confer an overpowering immediacy to the proceedings. Varun falters due to inexperience, but more than redeems himself in a sequence such as the one where he confesses to Nawazuddin about cold-bloodedly killing a couple. It is that ruthlessness of the rootless, a man who has lost everything, that Varun portrays with compassion.
2. In Shoojit Sircar’s October (2018), Varun imbued his performance of a hotel concierge with a disarming vulnerability. This is a deeply meditative, melancholic drama filled with resplendent visuals of trees shedding leaves and flowers almost as if they were crying over the loss of love. The narrative is denuded of all elements of hysteria and melodrama. Studied and yet spontaneous, Shoojit Sircar’s outstanding grip over his narrative and characters is reinforced by the camerawork (Avik Mukhopadhyay), which celebrates the pulsating allure of Nature and Life while all around us, things fall apart and mortality seeps into our soul. Varun Dhawan’s deep understanding of what makes a character as seemingly overbearing as Dan brings out his sensitive side, navigates the film’s simple, elegant structure through a maze of life-transforming experiences, which convey the unexpectedness of life as it suddenly swerves into death. There is not a single superfluous moment in October, not a single frame that I would exchange for anything in the world. Everything falls in place, in spite of the cosmic chaos that controls our universe. Because, as Varun Dhawan’s Dan realizes, there is love at the end.
3. After I saw Sharat Katariya’s debut film Dum Laga Ke Haisha, I hoped the director won’t sell out to the star-system. But his second film Sui Dhaaga (2018) starred a market-friendly lead star. I hoped Katariya’s second film won’t lose the charm and innocence of the first. Providentially, Sui Dhaga loses none of the delicacy and sting even while providing space to its leads to surrender to their characters. Varun Dhawan surrenders to his character Mauji as though the role was tailor-made for him. Never afraid to look less than heroic on-screen, Varun furnishes his tailor’s character with a rugged candour. This is an actor and a character who are so sincere to their craft that they don’t mind crawling on the floor if that’s what it takes to stay afloat. Varun’s performance is filled with a smothered disappointment. It takes his quietly confident and deceptively docile wife, Mamta (Anushka Sharma), to bring out the suppressed ambition in her husband. The aspirational narrative of how Mauji finds his groove with considerable help from his street-wise wife, works like a charm because all the performers are solidly sincere. But most of all, Sui Dhaga wins our hearts because the director never milks the milieu for sloppy sentimentality. Nor does he swing the other way to make the middle-class ambiance a place to celebrate misery. The tone is constantly energetic, yet poised. Katariya is neither awed by stillness nor intimidated by noise. He listens to the heartbeat of the heartland. We listen.
4. In Jugjugg Jeeyo, Varun Dhawan used his boyish appeal to infuse his spousal act with a mix of bewilderment, grief, and anger. This is his best performance since Badlapur, and in both he played a married man. Clearly, marriage suits the actor. Jugjugg Jeeyo, a vastly enjoyable take on that eccentric institution known as marriage, questions the entire sanctity of the holy vows and just stops short of saying that the institution is irrelevant and obsolete. Director Raj Mehta has a lot to say on the abuse of marital vows and how quickly they (the vows) turn sour if left too long to dry in the sun. While Anil Kapoor’s patriarchal character comes across as boorish and loud, Varun Dhawan plays it lowkey. He uses his boyish personality to portray Kukoo as a child-man who has never learnt to take his responsibilities as son and husband seriously. Dhawan has the most heavy-lifting to do in the cast, and he does it well. Varun Dhawan and Kiara Advani’s lengthy, raw, interesting, but slightly self-conscious confrontation sequence lets the mutual bitterness spill out in welters of accusation.
5. In Border 2, Varun Dhawan and Diljit Dosanjh are the cloud and the sunshine duo. Without cutting into Sunny Deol’s supremacy , they bring a whole lot of heft to the proceeding. Varun is shy, awkward, and unskilled in dealing with his new bride (Medha Raina). It is performance where Varun’s uncertainties showed.
