ABHISHEK BACHCHAN
In film director Ratnam’s Guru 2007, where he plays a character loosely based on the late industrial Dhirubhai Ambani Abhishek Bachchan says: Mujhe Nahin Nahin Sunai Deta if it could speak his career could well say the same. After seventeen successive flops each inviting a critical as well as commercial lashing Bachchan was almost written off held aloft as an example of a star son who failed to shine. But then in 2004, Ratnam choe hom to play the street smart petty criminal Lallan in Yuva . Sometimes enraged and at other times passionate in the role of a man with option in life but to resort to thuggery, Bachchan perfected for it a Bihari accent speaking in the slightly rustic Hindi of people who live in the Indian state of Bihar. The breakthrough role, four years after his heralded dubut in J. P. Dutta’s border romance Refugee 2004, made critics sit up and take note and was quickly followed with the role of police officer jai Dixit in the stylish Dhoom 2004, from then on with commercially satisfying performances as the small town dreamer Rakesh Bunty or bubli a Michael Corleone Shankar Nagre in Sarkar power, the slick police Officer’s Shankar Dheer is a Pehchant for pink shirts in dus Ten and the cool common Roy Kapoor in Bluff Master he had arrived. Bachchan whom even close friends such as director Karan Johar has started doubting as an actor now finds himself at the top of the Generation Next pyramid along with another star son, Hrithik Roshan. The year 2006 saw him playing the cuckolded man-child in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna and a passionate royal in Umrao Jaan, while in 2007 his roles include a rule-bending and law-breaking robber baron in Guru a second generation mafia don in Sarkar-2, and a southhall-based MrFixer Ricki Thukral in the light hearted caper Khoom Barabar Jhoom Bachchan’s biggest assaet and his great drawback is that he is Amitabh Bachchan’s son. The senior Bachchan is probably the most famous living actor in Bollywood cinema, outstripping even the star who defined the cinema 1940’s and 1950’s Dilip Kumar His extraordinarily long career means that he was still a force to reckon with and was playing youthfull old men when his son was finding his feet in the film business. Comparisons were inevitable especially as Abhishek Bachchan struggled to fit the pretty-boy mould which at the time was the order of the day.
But Bachchan through a series of experiments seems to have found his metier. It is one which suits the cinematic temper of the times. He is an actor first then a star. With Bollywood films becoming more daring. If Bachchan a young man who spent more than a decade abroad first in a boarding school in switzerland and then at college in Boston before he dropped out can play a boy from the imaginary small town. Fursatganj in north India who refuses to become a railway ticket inspector like his father in Bunty aur Babli he is also a US-educated underworld scion in Sarkar-2. all this requires an insight into life that is not always available to a privileged thirty-one-year old like him. But Bachchan has shown he is a quick student., For Guru he collaborated with Ratnam for over six months working out various styles improving his look and contributing several pieces of dialougue. For Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna much of the part was written based on his own character impetuous and part serious.
His first J.P Dutta saye he us a man who thinks with his heart. It’s not say his head has no role to play it does. He is one of the most well spoken actors in Bollywood with an interested in edgy independent cinema, world music and non-fiction. He has two of the finest advisors in the business his father Amitabh Bachchan and his mother Jaya Bachchan actress and member of parliament. His lot of friends encompasses sons of film maker Goldie Behl his director on Bas Itna sa Khwab and the forth coming Drona and young actors such as sikender Kher son of actors Kirron and Anupam Kher. What’s more his recent marriage to the woman dubbed as the most beautiful in the wirld. Aishwary Rai makes him one half an extremely desirable media magnet. The couple India’s answer to Brangelina sell as many tabloid covers as they are excepted to sell movies their first three collaborations Dhai Akshar Prem Ke and Umrao Jaan were box-office disasters but Guru did well.
Bachchan’s career has shown the importance of persistence in an ere where the moment alone matters. He has shown remarkable improvement clothes and his dancing skills. He has also shown that he can invent a new style rather than try and fit into a prefabricated mould. Rohan Sippy his friend director of two films Kuch Naa Kaho and Bluff master cells him India’s will smith. He may not be India’s answer to the hip hop star but he is certainly showing as much ability to transform himself and his roles from the banal to the sublime.