It isn’t clear as yet why Vikrant Massey has decided to quit acting just when things are looking up for him after 12th Fail and The Sabarmati Report.
Long before these, Vikrant was immediately noticed as Ranveer Singh’s best friend in Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera. Ever since then Massey has been struggling to find his bearings in the film industry.
He was eminently watchable in the webseries Criminal Justice and Broken But Beautiful. Sadly films like Chhapaak and Haseen Dilruba seem to cast him as this millennium’s Vinod Mehra, that dependable actor who was typecast as the supportive co-star in women-oriented films in the 1980s.
Vikrant Massey awaited that one big explosion in his career. Konkona Sen Sharma’s directorial debut A Death In The Gunj did justice to Vikrant Massey’s talent. But no one saw that film outside film festivals. In A Death In The Gunj Vikrant Massey set a new benchmark in performing the inconspicuous common man’s extraordinary struggles to remain visible to a world that takes his presence for granted.
In Karan Rawal’s Short Film Half Full Vikrant played well against Naseer. Even though their interaction lasted for only twelve minutes, what the two actors succeed in conveying about the value of life is timeless. There is a quality of comforting familiarity in the way these two actors convey profound thoughts on mortality through a seemingly ordinary conversation.
Vikrant’s best performance was not in 12th Fail but Applause Entertainment’s Criminal Justice in 2019. Vikrant slipped into Riz Ahmed’s role, played by Ben Whishaw in the original BBC series. Both actors were extraordinary in portraying the traumatized murder accused who is actually a victim. But Vikrant had an edge as far as projecting vulnerability is concerned.
Right from the start when his interest in his hyper-strung passenger aggravates into passionate sex , to his arrest and his nightmarish experiences in jail (where he is nearly raped), Massey strips himself naked emotionally and physically, to play a man who never dreamt who would be in jail.
In a past interview Vikrant told this writer, “I’ve hardly ever played urban characters. I am proud to have played so many non-urban characters because I feel the heart of real India beats in the non-urban areas. If I have captured the heartbeat of the heartland in my performances I’ve succeeded in doing what I set out to do.”
Until we Meet Again
