Sara’s Twin Wins

It’s not often that a 28-year-old with a mere six years in the film industry gets to play two totally different women from two time periods in the space of two weeks, but Sara Ali Khan has done just that. In Netflix’s Murder Mubarak, she plays an entitled rich Delhi girl, while in Prime Video’s Ae Watan Mere Watan, she plays Usha Mehta, the Gandhian freedom fighter who used the secret Congress Radio during the Quit India Movement to keep the flame of revolution alive. Khan belongs to privilege, with two actor parents, but hasn’t had a very smooth ride in the film industry, though she began well with Kedarnath in 2018, one of Sushant Singh Rajput’s last films, and as much loved then as now. Ironically, she hadn’t wanted it to be her first release, taking the Kedarnath filmmakers to court because she thought she should begin with the more “commercially viable” Coolie No. 1. It’s always difficult for an actor to know what to choose and when but Khan has since then kept her head down, worked hard, and done some commendable work, especially in Anand L Rai’s Atrangi Re in 2021. This year promises to be exciting for her with these two releases, and the forthcoming Anurag Basu’s Metro…In Dino. The actor’s excellent Hindi, which unlike other actors she chooses to speak in most interviews as well, and appealing Instagram posts have got her a loyal fan following. But her focus is not as much the red carpet as the screen, big or small. She is steadily working her way through a list of good directors, moulding herself to the time and space of the plot. The director of Murder Mubarak,

Homi Adajania says of Khan, “I wanted her to unlearn everything and not prepare any scenes the day before. Instead my associate director, Vikram Dawar, would take her through acting exercises that were not directly related to a scene, but would facilitate her being in the moment in every scenario thrown at her. I remember one night before a big scene she texted me saying that she was totally unprepared for the next day and I replied, ‘perfect ’.” Adajania adds that Khan’s character, Bambi, plays a vulnerable young woman, who is almost naïvely unaware of her privileges. That is quite different from Khan who is acutely aware of her advantages. In Ae Watan Mere Watan, she is a young student who vows to do or die and spends four years in prison being tortured by the British. It required a different kind of physicality and attire. Khan delivered.

Sliding into Top Gear

The other day someone spoke of Raj Babbar, in the days he was an actor and not a politician, and commented on how he had acted with almost all the leading ladies of the day, despite not being top of the heap. Babbar’s answer was that he got to do that because no other leading man would do the “supporting” roles—for instance, of the particularly vile rapist in Insaf ka Tarazu (1980) with Zeenat Aman and Padmini Kolhapure. Several young male stars are in the same situation currently, good actors who are getting to play supporting roles in “heroine-centric” roles. Vikrant Massey and Vijay Varma are two charismatic actors who now seem at the cusp of stardom. Will stardom mean that they will abandon the women and do roles where the heroes get the lion’s share of the scenes? After 12th, Fail Massey has won a slew of awards, while Jaane Jaan and Murder Mubarak are turning Varma into a romantic hero, but when given an option will they opt for scripts that are high on action and low on dialogue? Unfortunately, it may well be so, because the box office still prefers conventionally loud movies with men in hyper-kinetic mode. Will these young men change the rules or let the rules change them?

Scene and Heard

Sobhita Dhulipala has made a quiet entry into a big Western movie, with elegance, poise and little noise, her trademarks. The actor, known for her work in Made in Heaven Season One and Two on Prime Video, as well as in Ponniyin Selvan 1 and 2, plays Sita, a high-class escort in Ashwini Kalsekar’s upmarket brothel in Monkey Man, Dev Patel’s relentlessly dark and violent directorial debut about survival in the streets of a fictional city called Yatana which may or may not be Mumbai. Patel plays the lead, Kid, who is from the slums but decides to turn on his oppressors using the exact means which they thrust upon him. With its reference to Hindu mythology and flashes of rightwing violence, it’s no surprise that it had to be rescued from Netflix by supernatural movie maestro Jordan Peele and given a theatrical release.

BollywoodcinemaSara Ali Khan