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CINEMA:
VILLAINS
New
Age Baddies
After
years of being comic book psychos and vulgar comedians villains today
have become casually evil and true to life
By Anupama
Chopra
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| Sushant
Singh in Jungle: A Veerappan-type trigger-happy bandit |
During
the making of his latest film Jungle, director Ram Gopal Varma
gave actor Sushant Singh the ultimate compliment when he called him a
"method-dresser". Because the theatre-trained artist, portraying
the role of a Veerappan-style bandit, started wearing his grubby worn-out
costume a month before shooting and refused to remove it even at night.
He also devoured every single written word available on Veerappan, lost
six kilos by going on a starvation diet, turned non-vegetarian to get
that tough, animal look and drank half a bottle of vodka each night to
ensure that his eyes were just the right shade of dangerous red. The effect,
of course, was there for everyone to see in the movie. "I wanted
Durga Narayan Chaudhary to be chillingly real," says Singh.
Real is
the operative word here. After decades of being caricatures, comic-book
psychos and vulgar comedians, Hindi movie villains are now striving for
reality. As makers realise that in evil at least, less is more, a new
generation of faces is creating fresh dimensions in bad behaviour. The
outlandish dens, the foolish flunkeys, the simpering molls, the theatrical
dialogue-baazi, the painfully unfunny comedy is out of the window. A satellite-savvy
audience no longer finds over-the-top wickedness frightening. Hollywood
may be opting for larger-than-life non-human baddies (aliens, dinosaurs
and natural disasters) but Bollywood is going for real. So today's baddie
is more likely to be an ordinary man with extraordinary passions. He's
casually evil. And his villainy is all the more disturbing for it.
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| Irfan
Khan in Gaath as a street-level fixer, casually dressed and
armed with a mobile |
Take Irfan
Khan as Mamu in the forthcoming film Gaath. Mamu, a swiftly rising
street-level hoodlum, is a fixer. Mostly dressed in casual cottons, the
power broker's most potent weapon is his mobile phone. "Today having
the right phone numbers," says director Akashdeep, "is more
powerful than an AK-47." Mamu's partner in crime is a resolutely
repulsive corrupt policeman, Mukesh Tiwari, who spells police as P for
power, O for order, L for liar, I for income, C for corrupt and E for
encounter. Mamu's no Mogambo. He has no den and no gadgets but the terror
he inspires is absolute.
Recall Gulfam
Hassan in last year's award-winning film Sarfarosh. Hassan, played
to perfection by Naseeruddin Shah, was a ghazal singer. But underneath
the Urdu shairi and cultured grace beat the heart of an ISI pawn who bites
off the ear of a lamb in anger when the animal breaks some antique musical
instruments. Hassan was an angst-ridden artiste spewing venom against
his country of birth, India. Says director John Matthan: "I was tackling
an issue that is realistic so I needed a villain who was real."
Pg.
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