Spontaneous light acting that brings us joy is no lesser than the carefully calibrated heavy-duty dramatic performance that makes us search our souls.
I’ve been thinking a lot about a lot of performers, performances and performance styles. It’s always been an interest, but the passing of Irrfan and Rishi Kapoor on consecutive days, last week, has made me think about this complaint often levelled against the Academy Awards: that the serious kind of acting is (almost) always considered the better kind of acting. Let’s take two actors generally considered gods of their craft. Marlon Brando won an Oscar for On the Waterfront. His superb comedic performance in The Freshman wasn’t even nominated. Meryl Streep won an Oscar for The Iron Lady. The air and sunlight she infused into the screwball shenanigans of It’s Complicated wasn’t even considered. (The Devil Wears Prada, at least, fetched her a nomination.)
Read the rest of this article here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/bollywood-irrfan-rishi-kapoor-and-thoughts-on-the-perceived-worth-of-a-performance-baradwaj-rangan-jazbaa-amar-akbar-anthony/
Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.
Baradwaj Rangan 
ravenus1
May 6, 2020
To a good extent appreciation of an actors has to do with audience and critics perception of the films themselves. If for instance, a critic says “the film has serious flaws / is a load of BS” how many people that rely on those critics are going to watch the film just for one actor’s performance. People who like Irrfan Khan in Qissa will be a lot less likely to catch a film which they consider him to be doing purely for the paycheck. On the other hand, the opinions of the people that watch the ahem less critically applauded movies don’t count, except in popular choice awards.
All over the world, serious drama is considered more artistically demanding and more respectable than comedy that plays to the gallery. Amitabh may personally have found it tougher going to do the loud and proud Anthony from AAA, but I involuntary think of Kaala Patthar and Shakti when someone mentions great Amitabh performances. It is IMO an acceptable arrangement that one gains more instant popular acclaim (and box-office value) and the other gets a better amount of audience recognition after bagging an award.
That way action is its own genre, but I wouldn’t like to see a Tiger Shroff get a National Award over an intense Manoj Bajpayee performance because he pulls off a better flying kick.
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krishikari
May 6, 2020
So much agree with all this. Light acting is underappreciated. I think it must actually be more difficult to pull off. (Again Qarib qarib single is not mentioned, did you hate it?)
I also hope desperately that the Indianness of Indian cinema, with its emotional core, music, dance and the sheer unabashed lunacy, never goes out of style even as it becomes slick, tastefully colour coordinated and logical.
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shalinirazdan
May 6, 2020
Every once in a while, you write something I can’t disagree with, even a little. It’s so…annoying. Peace.
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Madan
May 6, 2020
” the former was a great actor in a series of great movies, while the latter was a great actor in a series of light entertainers, “minor films”, with the occasional great movie thrown in. ” – Now this line contradicts both the parts of the article where you note Irrfan’s great performances in movies that are not particularly well regarded and your own article earlier on Irrfan.
What you say is something I would generally go along with when we compare heavy actors in heavy films with light actors in light films. I tend to think of them as different worlds. I think Naseeruddin for one would be lousy in light roles (and he has shown himself to be such on more than one occasion, both as the villain of Krissh as well as in Dirty Picture which wasn’t even such a light film and deserved more respect than he was prepared to give it).
But Irrfan? It’s much harder to pigeonhole him. That casualness he could wear so lightly, naturally and effortlessly was such an asset for him. And it kind of separates him from many other members of the so called method school. I would say he was a bit more like Om Puri (but able to be even more disarming). Om Puri was brilliant in Chachi 420. I think they both had several gears and could choose which one to go through at will, but Puri was a tad more imposing which was an asset in roles like Ardh Satya but would also make him less suitable for roles like Life In A Metro.
I think Nawazuddin Siddiqui hit the nail on the head when he said he wished so much in depth analysis of Irrfan’s work had taken place when he was alive. Only now that he is no more with us do we realise what we have lost.
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Madan
May 6, 2020
” Light acting is underappreciated. I think it must actually be more difficult to pull off. ” – Depends on the actor. Meryl Streep is able to pull off light acting. MAYBE her Pretty Woman would not rise up to Julia’s but I can imagine her being effective in that mode too. OTOH you would have to pay me to make me watch Julia as Margaret Thatcher. Likewise, Leo or McConaughey shift modes smoothly. But it is difficult to imagine Ben Stiller in the role of defence lawyer of Time To Kill (one of McConaughey’s early and overlooked tour de forces). OTOH for ANY serious actor to act like Jim Carrey? Now that would be a challenge. It depends more on the skill level being called for and less on whether it’s light or heavy. On similar lines, it would be easier for Irrfan to execute say Rishi’s role in Bade Dilwale but to do Govinda would be much tougher. It would also be hard for me to contemplate Irrfan in a HKKN kind of role because of the amount of dancing Rishi does there.
When the comedy is stretched to an outrageous extreme, it becomes much more difficult to do it. But if the actor is only required to be casual and light hearted, good actors can get there.
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Anu Warrier
May 6, 2020
I absolutely adored Irrfan – whether in his masterful performance as Maqbool, or the dead-pan, wise-cracking man-child in Qareeb Qareeb Single. Having Parvathi opposite him didn’t hurt either, because both fed off the other, and we got a fabulous ride.
But. I have often mourned the demise of the pure ‘masala’ film. I often think it’s hard to pull off the theatrical performances well – and make them believable. And Rishi was nothing but natural – even in the weirdest of getups or the most illogical of films. He seemed like he belonged to that universe. He was a damn good actor, and who knows, if he had Irrfan’s career trajectory, people may have taken him more seriously. It’s a shame, really, to demote one actor in comparison to the other just because he didn’t act in ‘realistic’ films.
We would be the losers if we ape the west to such an extent that we remove the sheer joy, colour and exuberance from our films. In a recent interview with Javed and Shabana on FC, the latter mentioned how story-telling through song is a long tradition in our arts. It’s as valid a way to tell a story as it is to be all gritty and realistic. It would be a shame if we ditched it in an effort to get validation as a ‘serious’ industry.
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brangan
May 6, 2020
Anu Warrier: the latter mentioned how story-telling through song is a long tradition in our arts. It’s as valid a way to tell a story…
That’s exactly what Rajiv Menon said in my interview with him. (It went up today.)
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Devarsi Ghosh
May 6, 2020
This is the best place to share this, so here’s Manu Joseph on Rishi Kapoor and Irrfan. (I marvel at the things he has enough opinions on in the world to produce 1000-word pieces).
https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/how-wrong-we-are-about-actors-is-what-makes-them-great/amp-11588514709873.html?__twitter_impression=true
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Madan
May 6, 2020
Well, as usual, MJ leaves me confused about what is it he finally wants to say. Like the professor from 3 Idiots, Arre Aap Kehna Kya Chahte Ho! MJ’s articles remind me of a Tamil word that is apt, I think: vellakennai.
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rsylviana
May 6, 2020
On a similar note, it would also be great if our filmmakers give due respect to the song-and-dance routine and use it to create an impact on the audience rather than mindlessly plugging in songs into our films just because it is part of the “formula”. I’d argue that this obsession to adhere to the “five songs one fight” protocol is doing as much damage to our masala films / musicals as our tendency to uphold western sensibilities and perspectives as superior.
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brangan
May 7, 2020
ravenus1: That way action is its own genre, but I wouldn’t like to see a Tiger Shroff get a National Award over an intense Manoj Bajpayee performance because he pulls off a better flying kick.
I am talking about PERFORMANCE. So if someone gave a great performance in an action movie, it is something that usually never gets valued — like Bruce Willis in DIE HARD or Liam Neeson in THE GREY or especially Uma Thurman in KILL BILL: 2.
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ravenus1
May 7, 2020
Uma Thurman was nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe for each Kill Bill installment, but I get the point you’re making here.
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Madan
May 7, 2020
I don’t really buy the notion that Irrfan’s acting was adhering to Western sensibilities or their notions of what is acting. He is very, very Indian, in roles like LIAM or Qarib Qarib Single, he sounds very much like an Indian male in that age group. It is just naturalistic acting as opposed to the elevated sensibilities and drama of old Bolly. But naturalistic acting isn’t new or a Western import. It was there in parallel cinema and it was also there in Malayalam films. Even Marathi films, I would say. The acting in Sairat or YZ is even more naturalistic than films like QQS. It’s all good. Our cinema is maturing and developing its own grammar and idiom separate from theatre/nadagam.
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Ravi K
May 7, 2020
Rsylvania: “On a similar note, it would also be great if our filmmakers give due respect to the song-and-dance routine and use it to create an impact on the audience rather than mindlessly plugging in songs into our films just because it is part of the ‘formula'”
I absolutely agree. Other than the rare “Jagga Jasoos,” the vast majority of Indian films in the past few decades haven’t used songs to tell the story or build character development. They’re easily removable music video speedbreakers, and I do not have any great attachment to that use of songs.
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Madan
May 7, 2020
Both Sairat and YZ were able to use songs beautifully in the films without having the pitch the acting at a melodramatic level. It is not naturalistic acting or filmmaking that clashes with songs. It is that in Hindi and Tamil, filmmakers pander to youthu factor and place songs only to attract attention and score hits, NOT for what they can contribute to the film.
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krishikari
May 7, 2020
About songs in Indian cinema, I think Imtiaz Ali expressed it best. To paraphrase what he said: the songs are the emotional track of our films. They are not just for plot and character development. To remove them would be to lose half the story, the part that deals with feelings and inner lives. Of course they have to be used well, thanks for that Honeymoon travels clip which does all those things!
I am really glad my western brought up kids like masala films and appreciate that the songs and dancing are the most entertaining and core parts of our films. I came to this appreciation late, watching mostly western movies in my youth, but even then our most joyful outings were SNF or Grease. Now, I have almost given up on Hollywood’s cold movies, I would rather look at two flowers touching than two toned bodies mechanically tearing their clothes off.
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Ravi K
May 7, 2020
The typical way of using songs is that the songs exist in a separate space and reality from the rest of the movie. They’re rarely part of the world of the movie. Wouldn’t be it joyous to see more songs weaved into the main body of the film? To see characters burst into song right where they are? “Jaane Kyun Log Pyar Karte Hai” from “Dil Chahta Hai” is a good example.
The way songs usually are used, there is a “story world” and a “song world” and I want to see the energy of the “song world” become of a part of the “story world.”
Madan, I’ll check out YZ. I haven’t seen many Marathi movies.
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Mank fan
May 8, 2020
BR, I must say this one of your rare pieces where the intent and central argument isnt very clear and I felt you were constantly digressing.
I think every major critic/film writer in India singled Rishi out as a complete natural and a bonafide movie star.
I do not think Irrfan would have been able to lipsync or play an instrument on screen like RK. Infact even in the slice of life/middle of the road films that RK did later in his career, he brought a very different energy/ebullience on screen, so it is difficult to compare the two even in those kind of films…Also to Rishi’s credit he is among the very few mainstream stars of his time who didn’t have a trademark style or performance trait and hence was hardly mimicked and evolved into playing character parts with great elan.
Irrfan on other the hand warrants a comparison with the likes of Om & Naseer because their style, craft in middle of the road/parallel films are similiar and Irrfan like those two was bloody good.
The other thing you touched upon great performances or great films – about people mistaking an actor in a great film as a great performance is interesting. I maybe the minority here, but I thought Irrfan’s perfomance in Maqbool and Lunchbox was’t particularly great although both were great films as opposed to him being great in lesser films like saat khoon maaf & Haasil. Unfortunately actors are mostly remembered for their films by future generations.
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brangan
May 8, 2020
Mank fan: I agree the piece on paper didn’t exactly come out the way I had it in my head.
But I wasn’t comparing the two actors. I was saying something more general, which is that a JAZBAA is as valuable a “performance” as a LUNCHBOX, an AMAR AKBAR ANTHONY is as valuable a “performance” as a MULK.
To continue the metaphor in the piece, I wish we had a way to reward the “ice cream” performance as much as the “apple”.
The Golden Globes have it right, with separate categories for comedy/musical and drama. Though again, “comedy” is too restrictive a word.
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Madan
May 8, 2020
“I was saying something more general, which is that a JAZBAA is as valuable a “performance” as a LUNCHBOX, an AMAR AKBAR ANTHONY is as valuable a “performance” as a MULK.” – This I agree with. But this haunts the arts throughout. People always tend to focus on the concept and its real or perceived importance when really art is about how creative the presentation of the concept it is. This happens in music too. So much importance is invested in discussing the merits and demerits of Pink Floyd because their work is dead serious and relevant (and I love it, make no mistake). But as MUSICIANS, they are no more talented than AC DC and possibly less so. Most non-stop Gilmour fellato crowd have no idea what a beast Angus Young was and you add that to the rhythm guitar brilliance of Malcolm, then chanceless pa. And neither Gilmour nor Waters can sing/scream like Scott/Johnson. To say nothing of Nick Mason whom musicians flex all sorts of intellectual muscles to contextualise his greatness when he himself admits he needed a sessions drummer to play Mother because even THAT was too hard a time sig for him.
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Vidya Ramesh
May 8, 2020
I have been watching the songs from piku for the past two days. Rewatched piku also.. I can’t imagine “feeling” the movie without the songs. People who have not been exposed to the Indian movie watching experience with songs haven’t really lived. I was feeling like a part of me died after irrfan khans death.. I don’t know why.. Those songs really helped.
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Aisha
May 8, 2020
I always wonder how much credit can be given to the actor for a performance vs. the director (and really even the writer for designing their arcs). Would be nice to hear others’ thoughts on this.
On another note, many actors in Indian cinema become popular because of their trademark acting in every movie. Now, I’m not talking about style or swag, like what Rajnikanth pulls into his performances, but maybe more like Ayushmann, who has become rather monotone with his body language in his social message movies. Shouldn’t talented actors play each character as a different person though, instead of making every performance look the same? This makes me wonder if it’s the actor’s fault for not being able to turn the characters they play into distinct people, or if it’s the director’s fault for not correcting the actors when they fall into that trap or for wanting their actor to act the same way they did in their last hit movie.
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Devarsi Ghosh
May 8, 2020
No objections as such with this piece, but the general sort of discussion around who was the better actor after their deaths was just so stupid: more so because the chattering classes of Twitter were busy flogging RK’s legacy with not just the usual allegations of crimes against humanity but also the charge of being a bad-song-dance-actor-who-made-stupid-films while Irrfan was the One Great Actor who made India Proud.
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brangan
May 8, 2020
Devarsi Ghosh: “the charge of being a bad-song-dance-actor”
Really? Who said that? 😀
Aisha: I always wonder how much credit can be given to the actor for a performance vs. the director (and really even the writer for designing their arcs).
Not so much the writer. But yes, the director — if any good — will have a say in how the actor translates the writer’s words and actions. But we generally attribute it to the actor because it’s hard to say whether a particular reaction shot, say, was the actor’s idea or the director’s idea or even a judicious editor’s call.
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ravenus1
May 8, 2020
Actor Malcolm MacDowell reportedly once said, “People said I was good in that Robert Altman film, but it’s easy to be good in an Altman film. You try being good in Cyborg 3”
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Madan
May 8, 2020
“I always wonder how much credit can be given to the actor for a performance vs. the director” – It’s a combination of both. But then there are cases of a good actor lifting a bad or mediocre film (Naomi Watts in King Kong) or a bad actor defeating the best efforts of a director (Esha Deol in Ayutha Ezuthu or if Mani example won’t do, then Daryl Hannah in Wall Street). It’s kind of like music director-singer equation. Yes, the music director composes the song (as a director composes the shot and the scene) but the right singer/actor is needed to deliver the lines/enact. That’s why if a good actor is found to be underwhelming in a particular role, we use the euphemism of ‘miscast’. 😛
“Shouldn’t talented actors play each character as a different person though, instead of making every performance look the same? ” – I wrote a Readers Write In about this very topic, exploring whether it is even true that good actors don’t play themselves or what is it that actor actors (as opposed to stars) do. And they are not boxes so much as a sliding scale as to the degree to which an actor loses oneself in the role or, alternatively, imposes oneself on the role.
I will add, though, that while a lot of the thread discussion was on Indian actors, the article was written mainly from the perspective of Hollywood because actor actors don’t get lead roles except in small films in India.
You mentioned Ayushmann and I think his acting in Andhadhun, while not incredible, was very apt and effective for the role. There is an element of typecasting that becomes difficult even for good actors to escape.
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Madan
May 8, 2020
More answers here. Specifically at 31:40 thereabouts (first audience question):
But the whole interview, really, is a gem.
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Devarsi Ghosh
May 8, 2020
BR: No, they did not mean he is a bad song-and-dance actor, but a bad-song-and-dance actor, as in someone who’s bad by the virtue of only being good for song and dancing.
And who said it? Nobody famous. Just a bunch of wokidiots on my FB whom I unfriended or blocked instantly on seeing their dumb RK opinions. I’m sure there were similar stuff on Twitter. Not active there, so missed it.
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Aisha
May 9, 2020
@ BR & Madan,
Thank you for your input! I definitely believe that, in most cases, both the director and actor deserve credit for the performance, but I also wonder if you could take a performance and figure out which parts of it come from the actor and which parts come from the director.
And Madhan, I liked Ayushmann in Andhadhun and most of his performances before that movie, but I mainly talking about him in his past few “social message” movies, like Bala, Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdhan, Dream Girl, etc. For me, at least, his acting is quite similar in each of those films, but that could also be because of how similar each of the characters are at their core. Even then, I would have loved to see Ayushmann put a bit more effort into making those performances more distinct. Your mention of getting typecast is definitely true though.
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brangan
May 9, 2020
Aisha: I also wonder if you could take a performance and figure out which parts of it come from the actor and which parts come from the director.
Nope. Even if there is great imbalance between the talents of an actor and director — say, Irrfan and Sanjay Gupta — the latter could very well have been the one who controlled the tonality/gesturality of that performance by asking for retakes or suggesting something be toned up or down.
Because cinema is such a collaborative medium, we allot certain achievements to people holding certain job descriptions.
If we like the acting, we single out the actor.
If we like the music, we single out the music director.
If we like the cinematography, we single out the cinematographer — thought it may be the director who visualised the shot and all the cinematographer did was simply shoot it.
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Madan
May 9, 2020
Devarsi Ghosh: That kind of recency effect can’t be helped, sadly. I remember getting infuriated when a Tamil channel asked a bunch of teenage girls who their least favourite music director was and they said Ilaiyaraja. I wouldn’t TODAY because I would simply respect their right to a different opinion. But the phenomenon informing that and Rishi-bashing is the same – just assume every art product before your time sucks and don’t make any effort to see if your assumption is wrong. The flipside of this is the ageism effect where elders routinely diss contemporary art products, again, without questioning whether it says more about themselves than the art in question. Today, people are not going to remember that both Rishi and Jeetendra were good at acting AND at dancing unlike, if I may, Amitji or Dharam. I think both actors have suffered because of acting in a lot of stupid films and also because they didn’t conform to a certain asli mard image that prevailed at the time. At least Jeetendra got the Gulzar films back then and Rishi had a great second innings…
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Kaushik Bhattacharya
May 26, 2020
@Madan: I think Naseeruddin for one would be lousy in light roles.
Really?? Not sure if you think of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron as a “light” film or not but it’s surely one of Indian cinemas best comic efforts all round with Naseeruddin in the lead. And he was equally good in comic turns in lesser films like Bhavni Bhavai, Maalamaal, and Chamatkar. And while I agree that he did a lot of forgettable stuff in his masala outings in the 80s and 90s especially, there were some really good (cheesy) turns in the traditional villain roles in films like Bezubaan, Mirch Masala, Mohra, and Rajkumar.
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Madan
May 26, 2020
@ Kaushik: Of course I have seen JBDY. Several times. One of my favourites. But I don’t even think it’s a particularly comic or light film and I fully agree with Kundan Shah’s own assessment that it was really a tragedy masked as satire. There is an element of comedy but I also believe the stellar cast including Om Puri, Satish Shah and Ravi Baswani supported him well in a context where he didn’t have to actually enact comedy but was simply placed in comic situations. Kundan Shah invented the situational comedy that spawned a million Crazy Mohan/Priyadarshan films and never got his due. I did not like Naseeruddin though in either Chamatkar or Sir. And it became much worse later on, with his horrendous hamming in Krishh. What I could not understand was he deemed even Milan Luthra’s Dirty Picture as apparently too inferior a project and murdered his role in that one too. This is where I started to find this habit of his infuriating. If you sign up a film for money, you still have an obligation to give your best. Gary Oldman doesn’t ham his parts in Air Force One or Batman just because he can do much more than that.
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Kaushik Bhattacharya
May 29, 2020
Madan: that’s fair enough but this is where I think that views on performances start to get really really subjective. I love Gary Oldman but think he hammed hugely in his role in Air Force One, and in the likes of The Book of Eli. And don’t even get me started on how he essayed the role of Dracula! 😀
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Madan
May 29, 2020
Kaushik Bhattacharya: I think of Dracula as a bad movie by FFC (yes, THE FFC, I know) which Oldman salvaged with an over the top villainous act which was the only thing that could have made it worth sitting through. If you want a good Dracula FILM (as opposed to just a good Dracula for which any Christopher Lee film would do), the 1979 one starring Langella in the titular role is the only one that works for me.
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