WHY ABHISHEK BACHCHAN ENDED HIS SABBATICAL FOR ‘MANMARZIYAAN’
▶ Kaleem Aftab speaks to the actor at the Toronto International Film Festival about his latest film, and why it caught his attention
Abhishek Bachchan has marked his return to Bollywood after a twoyear hiatus with Anurag Kashyap’s love triangle drama, Manmarziyaan (Husband Material).
The critically acclaimed director’s latest film has received rave reviews for good performances from the three protagonists, including Bachchan, who reflects on his mid-life crisis and what led him to this film.
“I had become complacent,” he says of a career that has seen him being burdened as the son of Bollywood’s biggest star, Amitabh Bachchan, and emulate his father’s success. “Things had become too comfortable internally. The job becomes too easy and you start coasting, not adding the masala needed, but when doing that, somewhere the creative person in you is dying, and that is a horrible place to be.”
Bachchan’s career was on the slide when he took a sabbatical. Despite starting with three flops, he revived his career in a rollercoaster ride of films since 2000, fought being stereotyped and compared with his illustrious father. The actor married high-profile actress Aishwarya Rai in 2007.
Nonetheless, the battery recharge was arguably needed for a career that was stagnating, and not for the first time.
Bachchan concedes in Toronto he felt spent. “It’s very scary. You start feeling hollow. My father, mother and wife, we are all actors, and I’ve been born and brought up in this industry. Films are my life – and I mean that religiously. This is my life and my being. I can’t imagine a life without films, and to think that if you carry on down this path you will lose it all, and there is nothing you can do.”
It was going to take something unusual or special to get the actor, 42, out of his slumber. The script for Manmarziyaan landed on his desk and immediately grabbed his attention: “When it said Anurag Kashyap and love story, they are two things that are not usually in the same sentence. I thought he would have a unique way of looking at it,” he explains As the opening song in the film tells us, “old-fashioned love stories need an update”. Kashyap certainly does that, but in unexpected ways.
Inspired by Francois Truffaut’s classic 1961 love triangle classic Jules et Jim, Kashyap has created a contemporary tale that has a remarkable central female character whose heart is torn between two men.
Rumi (Taapsee Pannu) is an edgy, bold and determined girl enjoying the fruits of a romance with Vicky (Vicky Kaushal), a DJ who wants to party and not the boredom of domestic life. Rumi’s family want her to marry Vicky or find someone else. But when he doesn’t put a ring on it, Rumi reluctantly agrees to be put on a website for singles seeking an arranged marriage. Bachchan enters as Robbie, a London-based Sikh investment banker, who is handed a photo of Rumi.
In Manmarziyaan, he plays Robbie, a self-assured prospective match who knows what he wants. After Vicky and Rumi’s romance bears no fruit, his entry to the story provides an interesting spin.
“When we did the character sketch, what scared the living daylights out of me was that the two other protagonists were flamboyant, passionate, wild, expressive and emotional, and here comes this guy who is the exact opposite. Robbie is introverted, silent and just absorbs. How am I to portray the passion of Robbie without being able to use flamboyance and flair?”
It was the director who put him at rest, “Anurag said ‘I want to film Robbie intimately.’ I didn’t understand this at first, and he explained he wants to put the camera right up in my face.
“That scares an actor because you can’t get away with anything. Then I started to understand that this was Anurag’s way of helping me out, as I just have to do it
and emote like I never have before.” The director took away Bachchan’s beefy muscles and asked him to use his acting chops.
The film is remarkable, radical even, in its depiction of Rumi. “The first question I ask anyone coming out of the screening is did you judge Rumi?” Bachchan explains. “If you judge her, we failed. I believe it’s the first time in Indian cinema that you have two male protagonists in love with an unusual female leading character, and neither of them want to change her or ask her to conform. They are giving a very important message, especially to our society – that love is love.”
It is also an important moment for Indian cinema. Kashyap, known usually for his brand of edgy, offbeat films, is directing a mainstream Hindi feature. “What’s nice is that
Manmarziyaan is a confluence of different styles. Anurag is known for a style of filmmaking, very gritty, visceral, violent and he loves to explore the underbelly of society. “Producer Aanand Rai has done the opposite in the movies he has directed. This blurs the line between the two types of cinema. The intertwining of two threads of Indian cinema, and when you juxtapose these two worlds, you come up with something unique.”
And it is a refreshed Bachchan who says he has three or four projects lined up. “Now that I’m back, I want to be fully committed.”