A celebrity of his time

He still lives from Friday to Friday, said Bachchan at the ‘Idea Exchange’ organised by The Indian Express. Yes, he could lend his celebrity to worthy causes, but he is fearful of opening himself to opposition from other points of view. Sure, he could have supported the small film movement in his heyday, but he was constantly worried: What if Prakash Mehra and Manmohan Desai didn’t cast him in their next? Now he is liberated from commercial pressures by factors outside his control — advancing age and the advent of the multiplex film. But no, he won’t do a Nishabd again — the Ram Gopal Varma film that courageously explores the sheer agony of an older man, played with great sensitivity by Bachchan, in a serious relationship with a much younger woman. Because the people have rejected it in the theatres and some have called him a “dirty old man”.

Listening to Bachchan today is an unsettling feeling for yet another reason. Bachchan is telling us that he has always been watching us. It’s as if he is inverting the unspoken pact made between actor and audience in the dark of the theatre — we watch, he performs.

Yet, take a step back and is it really a surprise that Bachchan reveals himself to be this hugely accomplished actor who would rather take an sms poll before he signs a film? A question follows. Who is he embarrassing more by his dissembling now: himself or us?

In a way, this is a question more specific to the celebrity of Amitabh Bachchan than any other. For all his uncommon talent, he has not been an artist at odds with his time, or in battle with it, like filmmaker-actors V. Shantaram and Guru Dutt, for instance. They went against the tide, kept making films that may not have been commercially successful, but in retrospect are deemed social and aesthetic landmarks. Or more recently Naseeruddin Shah, the man whose name Bachchan himself takes with undisguised respect and a certain yearning.

... contd.