Yash Chopra… Say this name and immediately vast landscapes appear, green slopes where lovers mirror their gaze in the other’s eyes, enchanting music lifts up a crowd of spring birds, dark men march towards their destiny, violence smoulders in the heart, suffering mothers obey their dharma, and love reigns supreme in spite of all odds. Mr Chopra’s reputation as an incurable romantic is so ingrained that it’s difficult to start with something very different! You might as well adore him or hate him, in fact. YC is Bollywood at its best, or at its worst. And love, melodrama… with so banal a theme, such a typically Bollywoodian feature, why does the man stand out? Where does the legend (and the money) come from?

What’s interesting in his profile is the relatively limited number of films, and the stupendous number of blockbusters. This Indian director, born in 1932, has done only 21 movies? How come such a sparse output – yet over such a long timespan - has been so successful? I know of a few other such directors, Stanley Kubrick, for example. But Indian film directors? In the prolific Bollywood culture, there can’t be that many. Yash Chopra has the rare gift of making a landmark film out of every opus he directs, or nearly. One might say he’s managed to find the mix of story and spectacle his audience was ready for. One might add he’s got that skill to be as true and evocative with social-political films as well as with love movies. He’s also associated with the greatest actors of the moment, mainly Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan for the men; and Sridevi, Rekha, Waheeda Rehman, Madhuri Dixit, among others, for the ladies. I would also add that he’s associated with the greatest musicians, Sanjeev Kholi, Hariprasad Chaurasia and ShivKumar Sharma, notably.

All this would be true. But I think it’s basically a knack for passionate stories. Stories that work. Yash Chopra knows how to exploit and tell stories in such a way that he meets the public that’s here to appreciate them. Good stories that are going to be successful need to deal with people’s main interests in life: the passions and desires which everybody feels or wants to feel. Rebellion and courage, virtue and sacrifice, love and duty. And the romantic dimension is perhaps not so much in the privileged choice of love – even though one can’t deny the place of that type of story – but in the intensity of the passions shown to transform the protagonists’ lives. Passion: does that word summarise Yash Chopra? Idlebain.com (here) says that “tradition” is a very important determination with Yash Chopra. Passion can of course be traditional, and dealt with in a traditional way. The author of that review contends that Lamhe (1991) was his only iconoclastic film. Having not seen all YC’s movies, I couldn’t say he’s wrong, but somehow tradition carries a certain conservatism which doesn’t exactly fit with passion. There is a violence and a revolutionary spirit in passion which doesn’t care about tradition. Yash Chopra has successfully innovated in ways that might have helped define tradition (that’s his classicism), but certainly he’s recreated this tradition to the point of challenging it.

He’s not a total inventor. No artist ever is, in fact. In order to be judged innovative (hip and trendy are qualifications you often read concerning YC), you have to understand the traditions, and depart from them: do something sufficiently powerful that will redefine them and set a style which others will in turn take as a basis. So if for example, Deewar takes up the “angry young man” theme from Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer (1973), Yash Chopra has created a trendsetter which critics don’t attribute to his forerunner. I haven’t seen any other Bollywood mine-films, but certainly Kaala Patthar has the depth and guts of any competitor.

Sometimes his stories are artificial to the point of straining the belief of his spectators: Darr deals with such an obsessive lover that one wonders if they really exist in real life. And In Lamhe, the basis of the plot is very thin: you have to accept that a daughter can look exactly like her mother to make the story credible: a very rare situation, I’d say. Coincidences occur rather frequently in YC’s cinema, and I’d say, they’re often romantic coincidences, which are only one type of coincidence. A coincidence is in itself rare (otherwise it wouldn’t attract attention to itself that much), so a romantic one… But I think the director couldn’t car less. What he’s doing is using a plot, perhaps artificially created to work under the circumstances, and draw on the potential created by that plot. He doesn’t hesitate to add meaning thanks to coincidences which elevate the story to the level of myth, or legend. Veer’s prisoner number (786) in Veer-Zaara (it’s also Vijay’s dockworker plate number In Deewar) is an example everyone has noticed. It’s Allah’s holy number, and the film is about the need to unite Muslims and Hindus.

In stories of passion, says the director, anything can happen. It’s like tragedy, or mythology: we are no longer really in the everyday reality (movie-goers don’t mind suspending their disbelief we know that): passion justifies a level of experience which has its own uniqueness. Symbols flare up in such stories, whereas in realty, you’d probably have to draw other people’s attention to them, and to you, the decipherer. On this blog I’ve developed the symbol of water in Kaala Patthar: making a film enables you to weave together bits and pieces of experience and occurrences in such a way that the meaning it displays will depend on that assortment. Yash Chopra knows how to do that task with particular skill. His choice of characters, drawing from world myths and legends give his best films an interest and a lasting effect. So if he forgets that dimension, he quickly becomes manipulated by the fickleness of passing taste. For me, that’s what happened with Dil to pagal hai.

There is another structural element which YC implements in his best movies. Let’s let him explain:

"Relationships interest me because man is one creature who is capable of sane as well as insane behaviour. It's this nature of human beings that inspires and gives room for innumerable plots. Like in Daag (1973), Raakhee, who played the other woman, created all the drama, as did Rekha in Silsila (1981). In Aaina (1993) it was the jealous sister while in Darr (1993) it was the obsessive lover. So unlike other movies where a villain is added to create the problems, in my films villainy is substituted by a third angle." (reference)

Ah, here’s something Bollywood has to learn from the master: “a third angle”. I have in effect rarely seen mainstream Bollywood movies adopt that technique. Of course many Indian films have, but they were often socially oriented, fringe-type movies. Yash Chopra has succeeded in bringing this third angle into commercial hits. What’s a third angle? It’s a pole of interest which is neither good or evil, black or white, and is sufficiently developed to tilt the standard Manichaeism towards or more all-encompassing rendition of human experience. In Deewar, for instance, the third angle is Vijay’s swerving (and therefore very human) fight to reach self-justification. In Darr, it’s the unclassifiable obsession of the crazy lover. In Kaala Patthar, it could be Mangal’s course from utter villainy to sacrifice. All these diversions from easily identifiable Good & Evil create a third angle which adds the depth and the richness to the best of YC’s movies. And this notwithstanding a hero structure which is more three-polar and dual. Veer-Zaara gives us perhaps the best example of this structure. Not only do we really have three essential characters (Veer, Zaara, and Saamiya), but these characters are themselves included in a wider generational structure where elders shape the role and life of their “descendants”. The third angle, brilliantly personified by Rani Mukherjee’s woman lawyer character introduces a last item of reflection which Yash Chopra’s films have been recognised for.

Indeed, despite the formidable stature which YC possesses today, he has not always seemed recommendable and acceptable to all publics. We’ve already alluded to that commentator who declared Lamhe iconoclastic, because of the supposedly incestual nature of the main love concern. But that commentator has forgotten that Deewar was deemed as scandalous when it came out. The famous scenes including Amitabh and Parveen Babi in bed, for example. But Vijay’s character itself must have been difficult to deal with: he’s a vindicator of rights who turns bad, a victim as well as a perverted hero. And seen from a certain westernised angle, Yash Chopra’s stance in Veer-Zaara to reconcile India and Pakistan is politically-correct; but I wonder if all Indians agree. Finally, his decision to impersonate in Pooja (from Lamhe) a free woman who does not care about the possible incestuous undertones of her love interest was brave indeed given the financial costs of a YC film. So Tradition is not that welcome in his films, as we can see. Yash Chopra is more a maker of traditions than a follower. And yet he remains mainstream, he is recognised as one of the reigning kings of the masala type. No little feat.

PS: I have decided to say next to nothing about YC the producer, but naturally that aspect would have to be taken into consideration. Not to mention his father’s role in the Aditya phenomenon.

PS2: Sorry for the long delay at looking after this blog! And this after so many readers asked to "keep it up"! But I'm a teacher, and the back to school period has been particularly demanding this year...

I’d seen other films with her before, but I really discovered Tabu thanks to Cheeni kum. “Cheeni Kum” means “less sugar”. And that’s what Bollywood has to offer with Tabu: a less sugary actress! With Tabu, the sweetness of many other mainstream actresses is absent: there is no exuberant emotionality, no fits, none of that Bollywood nonsense which we like so much. The colourful  and musical extragavaganza seems out of place… Even if recently so. Because Tabu has been in the past an actress like the score of others who have thrived in the escapist, glamorous, emotional, action-packed products which are as quickly forgotten as they are watched. Her image today is that of a concentrated, poised, intense (if graceful) woman, that expresses herself best in serious roles, and if we see her smile, it would be on a backdrop of some important mission or long-lasting destiny. I haven’t seen her much in her earlier films, but as far as I can judge from extracts, she’s always been rather cool and subdued, it seems to be her nature. Less joy and liveliness than others, and more reverie, aloofness, and sometimes even melancholy, I’d say.

On Bollywhat I found an interesting if perhaps provocative suggestion of Tabu’s “dual nature”. It’s by Subash K. Jha:

“For me, Tabu has two faces: The pouty pinup girl who, I believe, gives interviews to magazines only if she adorns the cover page. And the generous, thoughtful poetess, who responds to subtle stimuli. It is also hard to believe the girl who appears in the gossip columns is the same one who snuggles as close to Gulzarsaab as his own daughter Meghna”.

Frankly this first sounded like “what’s he talking about?” – but, well, Tabu does appear on all those rather glam pictures (she’s not a Mallika Sherawat, but ...), and has had her sizzly period before she decided to cool down:

Even if (at 38) she’s low-key sizzle compared to some debutantes of today, she’s obviously very image and body-conscious: but it would be difficult not to be when you’re exposed like she has been since she was 15, when she was first  spotted by an uncle and asked to play without any training. But there is nevertheless something ambiguous in her persona: she’s been involved in a star system that demands from its female exponents a type of behaviour which she accepts only reluctantly. You know, the standard female lover attitudes: looking up in a trance (or with a twinkle in the eyes) to the luscious black-haired and moustachioed good-looking guy on the beach (or wherever). The one with an orange sweat-shirt and impeccable black belt. It would seem she just doesn’t fit in that type of wooing and cooing. Yet she’s done it, and rather well, too. So do we assume she’s grown out of it? Or that she’s now in a position (financially, artistically) to choose films that satisfy her intelligence better? Probably both, in fact. Here’s what she says in one of her interviews (still that Bollywhat page):

“But then I started doing other movies and, of course, when you see adulation, and you see fame, and then when you see money, you’re like, “Oh, my God. Wow!” [laughs] So I did all of that. I’ve got all my designer bags for myself, I’ve traveled the world, and did the glamour bit, and enjoyed every bit of what I was getting. And then, at some point, I started enjoying what I was doing. I mean, my work got slowly, slowly isolated from the trappings of the film industry, and my stardom, and celebrity status. And then it became between me and my work, you know? And that’s what I started enjoying and started living with. And it’s really, really become me, and I have become my work, in many ways. And it’s become my identity. And it’s been so long that, you know, for me, my definition of my life is through my work, essentially.

She also says somewhere:

"I've always tried to be neutral. I have never stooped to grab roles..... after all you get what you deserve."

That “neutrality”… I wonder if isn’t another word for a certain pride; a pride which she has kept hidden inside for too long, but which is now justified and blooming. Certainly what has been a determining factor in her career is, like a number of other girls, her great physique. She’s been blessed with these regular features, these brooding eyes, a taller than average size, all which give her an aura which makes her differ from other actresses of the same mould (a good example is her shadowy character in Fanaa).

But that would be nothing, almost (it could even be a negative in someone who wishes to be regarded for what she is worth, and not for her appearance – cf. Aishwarya Rai’s dilemma), if there wasn’t something else, which can be summed up by this word: restraint. Tabu keeps herself at the back. That’s where she’s comfortable, that’s where she’s noticed, as it were. That’s where she shines, even. I’ve watched Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000) once again in order to write this, and it struck me as very clear. She’s a perfect n°2. And that’s why, probably she has both waited and feared to play in films where she would be the real n°1. In boy loves girl stories, the lead boy and girl and only pretexts: but a real film, like the Namesake (where she’s not quite n°1) and Cheeni Kum, where she is, in spite of Big B, show that evolution.

So that’s what Tabu has given Bollywood: a supporting actress as lead actress. She’s managed to make directors notice her by dint of playing her roles with a restraint worthy of the lead position. She’s transformed a shadow into light. And so naturally she’s treading uncertain ground when put in the front. She’s had to re-invent her comfort zone. The first result (that I know of) is Cheeni Kum, that very pleasant little film, because in the Namesake, she’s guided, and sided by all the other characters. In Cheeni Kum, she’s all on her own in front of Amitabh; it’s for real this time. The film rested on her, because He had nothing to prove, obviously. Incidentally, I found he didn’t shine that much. Big A is clearly too big for the role. Is there a film where he has been able to play vulnerability, instead of domination? But Tabu, now she pulled off something great. I’d say it’s a mixture of overflowing femininity and mature resistance to that spilling over. In Cheeni Kum, I think she knows she’s in possession of all her talent, that instinctive, self-taught responsiveness to life situations, and each second she’s calculating exactly how much she can give of her art.

Mira Nair, when voicing this famous appraisal “"She is India's Meryl Streep. She is an independent minded, great actress who is not worried about not looking glamorous”, understood exactly what Tabu was doing. Meryl Streep is the quintessentially feminine actress, endowed with everything that could have made her walk the tightrope of stardom above all the uplifted heads. She did reach stardom, but via another route, that of hard work, self-forgetfulness, and the choice of roles which demanded her everything. We’ll see if Tabu successfully follows that path! Certainly when she says “I am only interested in Tabu, the actress within me and I will not rest till I find her”, she seems to have understood the general direction. There would be a lot to say about her method, or perhaps one should say, absence of method. Here is how she puts it:

“I’ve never got outside of my own work and analysed or assessed the effect it has because if I’m doing it then I’m enjoying it more than I’m thinking of what effect and impact it is going to have. I just enjoy the process of bringing the character alive. It’s not like an intellectual process, and I can’t articulate it, because I don’t know how it happens. It’s more of an experience for me than something I can talk about.” (here)

Some of the rationale behind her personal style, her typical acting power lies I think in her own story. She doesn’t hide the fact that she was brought up in a divorced family, and educated at a convent (kanvent mè parhi hui – that’s part of a dialogue in my hindi learner’s book!), and so her naturally retiring nature was shaped by a very feminine environment – even if we’ve hinted at the (almost masculine) pride that existed in her down deep. And so incidentally one of the reasons for Cheeni Kum’s success, I’m sure, is her search of a father figure that has been lacking in her life. I’m not saying she found it in AB, but probably she could refer to the film’s story easily because of what she had lived. She does say, on the other hand, that she prefers older men:

“I am a free spirited person. Only an older man can control my free spirit. He’ll pamper me, and let me do what I want. I can flourish with him. If I am with a younger guy, I know he’ll be crushed under my personality. And I won’t be able to get along with a guy of my own age simply because he’ll compete with me. Today I have no patience and tolerance for all that. Perhaps I am unconsciously looking for a father in the man who’ll come into my life”.

What she has kept from her provincial upbringing (she’s from Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh, and is currently building a house there), and by this I mean her need to get back to a life that is very circumscribed, with family, friends, people she has always known – is a certain type of organisation, even meticulousness. Somebody testifies somewhere that she loves to send sms messages, but she never abbreviates any word! In her own terms, she is a sort of swami:

“My needs are small. So is my lifestyle. I come from a simple middle-class background, where my mother was a teacher and grandparents were lecturers. My needs since then haven’t soared much higher. I don’t party. Nor is my friend circle such that I feel left out. I am very content.”

Educated in a fashion that recalls heroines out of Jane Austen, she likes literature, travelling, discovering. There is something essentially free in her personality, which is certainly a consequence of a very deep understanding of what culture brings to women. There has even been a rumour that she wrote poetry herself (she denies that). One example of her intellectual and artistic tastes: Paulo Coelho.

“I’m reading his new book Like a flowing river. It’s so impactful and I feel it’s a great job that writers do. It can so influence people. It’s so much like films. There are so many books that have made a difference in my life. So I’m a fan of people who can express beautifully and who can really affect you with what they write.(link)

Finally, Tabu is both a woman of today, she’s modern, fascinating, she belongs to this fluid and communicating society, and she’s also a woman of yesterday, with her need to anchor herself in traditions, with her aching desire to better herself all alone, and probably resemble one day some family auntie, like in some XIXth century novels. Ah, I almost forgot, the big question of why she isn’t married yet:

I am not skipping the issue of getting married. I am only saying that it will take some time. Till then I don’t even want to tempt my ambitions my goals and my talent. I don’t want anything to mar or tar the road I have reached after having walked so far, after overcoming the many odds on my difficult route. I am a very happy person today, I don’t know how many times I have reported it. I don’t want happiness to leave me just now or at any time. A little more of it would do but I don’t want it to be taken away for ever, for God’s sake.

I have left everything in the hands of God. He has brought me from nowhere to a place I can call my own, my very own. He has chosen the route for me. He will also choose the goals. I will reach wherever He sends me. He is my leader I, Tabu, His most humble follower and as long as this relationship lasts nothing can come in my way, nothing can harm me.

Doesn’t all this recall some other beautiful and intelligent co-star who’s always placed her goals on a sort of high mountain, with the risk of appearing to snub other less fortunate mortals? Well, perhaps it does, and perhaps it doesn’t. Let me ask Tabu to close and say for her what sort of woman she is. She does it (I fancy) when she describes the heroine from The Namesake:

Ashima, for me, is the quintessential Indian woman for whom life is about growing up, and finding her independence, finding a good suitor for her, and getting her married, and finding and living a full life with her husband, wherever the husband is, and finding her own bearings and her sense of belonging in her family, which comprises of husband and children, the family. So I see Ashima as that. I see her as most of the women in my family have been.

I’ve been longing to write that LetsTalkAboutBollywood article about Naseeruddin Shah for a long time. He’s one of my favourite Indian actors, if not my favourite. Okay, let’s say he is my favourite actor (alive). I suppose it’s natural to take sides, so there, I prefer the fox to the lion. The lion’s beauty is a treat to watch, you stand straight when you watch him. But the fox’s cunning makes you duck and dodge, to see what’s behind, or inside, and that’s more my style. Everybody will agree that Amitabh is the lion: he’s the old king of Bollywood, as yet uncrowned. But Naseer is Foxy Loxy, the clever charmer, the unassuming jester, the cunning fooler. Naseer can do what he likes, the way he likes. He’s got that little wily face, those rodent’s eyes, that powerful and deadly jaw that can bite through any role and chew any text. Looking at him you think: “What a nice little man” But in fact he’s a devil. He’ll make believe you’re saved even though you’re damned, and will do so with that little absent-looking expression.  Wouldn’t you say that he’s half there and half not there?

A 1999 article calls him “Mr Chameleon”, and that’s noted everywhere. Shah’s versatility is renowned and deservedly praised. “It is this seemingly effortless ability to slip under any character's skin that has always ensured his success. Shah proudly says that he has no niche: "I have managed to avoid the trap.” No doubt, I’d say: you don’t trap the fox, he’s the one who traps you, and laughs his way out. “Grinning because he knows he has played all parts-from the libidinous villain and blind school principal to the famished villager and beefy weightlifter-picking up several trophies in the process, including a best actor award for Paar at the 1984 Venice Film Festival.” Here are a few pulloffs from this many-facetted crafty craftsman:

One of the best roles I’ve seen him in was that of the Subedar, the nazi-like overweening prig in Mirch Masala. It is in such roles that you see all his creativity, all his power. Somehow playing villains enables him to implement the buffoonery which acting always contains up to a certain extent, and which he feels capable of expressing perhaps more than others. In Masoom, we see him as the vulnerable and complex father who shifts from love to guilt, and has to learn to bear the awful weight of a truth made ten times more painful because he thought it simpler to hide years ago. The bland faces and awkward moves, the soulful eyes, the poignant silences: all testify to his great talent here too. In 3 Dewaarein, he’s Ishaan, the slippery conman, the elusive master trickster who steals the show continuously: he’s at the top of his art there. There’s a scene in which he dresses up as a dead man, and disappears in a James Bond-like manner, and yet is caught at the end by the black eyes of revenge (Juhi Chawla the avenger!): too many trap-laying makes one forget that others too can lay traps. That film really demonstrates his utter foxiness! One last example: Monsoon Wedding. Here, Shah is no trickster, but as the courageous defender of a wronged daughter, he has to face the all-powerful Uncle who has done everything for the family, including incest… A role that demonstrates his commitment to important causes, we’ll come back to this in a while.

I’ve always wondered whether there wasn’t something feminine in Naseer: perhaps it’s his smallish physique, perhaps his round features. In fact, when I look at his pictures, I see no femininity. He’s a guy all right! Perhaps it’s his way of acting then? There’s something fluid and easy-going in the way he acts, a naturalness, a presence, and also an absence of swaggering and machismo. It could also come from the way he adapts to his roles so fully, never caring about the loss of his own identity, something very few actors in Bollywood manage to do (even Amitabh has a tendency to remain Amitabh, I feel he’s more and more reluctant to let go of that cherished self-image of his). Naseer is more feminine in the sense that he doesn’t cling to his persona, like so many male actors do. In fact, I’m sure he’d be extremely successful in a transvestite role! (Not that I particularly wish to see him in such a role, but if there’s somebody who could do it, it’s him)

Most of you probably know that he is a theatre actor down deep, and that he regularly plays on stage. He has his own theatre company, the Motley Company (see here), he’s played for Peter Brook, and I wish he would also play for other world-renowned directors. In fact, when you study Naseer’s profile, he’s one of the rare Indian actors I know for whom I wouldn’t need to strain my praise and build some sort of half-category that pro-Bollywood affirmative action so easily justifies. Let’s say the truth, for once: Naseeruddin Shah is a good actor, but no more than Robert de Niro or Dustin Hoffman. Probably less, in fact. Yet he can suffer the comparison, something that almost nobody can do in today’s Indian Cinema. Aamir Khan has real presence, but is too self-centered; so is Shahrukh; Ajay Devgan’s scope is too limited. I haven’t seen Abhishek recently, but he strikes as too green for the moment. Most of them simply have to learn to act! I have only looked at some of the men, but apart from the one or two exceptions, the same could probably be said of the actresses. The problem is that the Indian cinema is still MUCH too India-oriented. Why would they make a crucifying effort at self-redefinition when a billion spectators are there to watch them strut, dance and sing? Who among them would be capable of dying that awful wriggling death that Shah performs in Sarfarosh? Not very pleasant in terms of hero-worship.

 
I am wondering if much of his talent doesn’t come from the fact that he isn’t a sex-symbol, and has had to fight to exist as an actor. Most of the young actors out there are remarkable for their good looks (to say nothing of the girls…): they just don’t need to be good. But if you’re not a pretty face, and you want to be noticed and have money bet on you, you’ve got to attract the money in some other way, talent for example. Somebody who is thinking at how to use his own drama company to reflect upon the political situation of the country where he lives – this would sound almost banal in Europe. But that’s something Naseeruddin Shah has been doing for a long time (see Playing tough). In that field and in others, I can’t see anybody following suit quite yet.  


Oh, and if you know of good films with him, I’m all ears!