Stars on Fire: Cast of Characters

Allu Arjun: Pushpa 2: The Rule

He is called the Icon Star but he has already declared his character in Pushpa 2: The Rule to be an Interna­tional Khiladi. He can dance like a dream, fight like a warrior and cry like a baby. Pushpa 2, his much awaited sequel, is a blockbuster, well on its way to becoming one of Indian cinema’s greatest hits. What makes Allu Arjun the entertainer of the year? I asked this question to Venkat Dhulipala, a historian who watched Pushpa 2 in Telugu in Wilmington, North Carolina where it was released in the theatre for a day. He calls him a phenomenal actor, like Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa’s Samurai films. “Pushpa is Yojimbo in Rayalas­eema,” he says. The character of Pushpa speaks a Telugu dialect from Chittoor/Rayalaseema and has more than a sprinkling of Kannada words. Allu Arjun’s voice and dialogue deliv­ery is pitch perfect. Arjun’s sense of timing is absolutely superb, Dhulipala adds. An empire of sandalwood, the ability to learn Japanese in 30 days while being stuck inside a shipping container, and romancing his wife every time she has feelings. What more can a man want?

Chhaya Kadam: Laapataa Ladies and All We Imagine As Light

“Being happy on your own is the toughest thing. Once you master it, no one can bother you,” says Manju Maai, Chhaya Kadam’s character in Laapataa Ladies. Her characters in Laapataa Ladies and All We Imagine As Light show us the beauty and liberty that comes with solitude. In Laapataa Ladies, she runs a tea stall at a railway station after having kicked out her abusive husband and son. In All We Imagine As Light, she is Parvati, a widow whose home is stolen from her by builders because she has no papers. When she returns home to her village with two other solitary women, drunk dancing in joy or walking far out into the sea, she is in her element.

Arvind Swamy: IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack

Whether he is discussing the merits of drinking coffee versus tea (for the record bad tea is better than bad cof­fee) as seasoned spymaster DRS in IC 814 or placing food on the terrace of his home for parakeets to eat in Meiyazhagan, Arvind Swamy exudes an unselfconscious ease that is rare in cinema where every actor is trying to do the maximum. Swamy, the star of Mani Ratnam’s Roja and Bombay three decades ago, knows less is more. There is a lived-in experience in his face and physique that sets him apart as an actor and makes him the perfect person to calm our jangled nerves as a society.

Samantha Ruth Prabhu: Citadel: Honey Bunny

She is a female samurai who shows what it means to fight like a woman. Whether it is packing her daughter into a trunk with her headphones on while her character, Honey, takes care of a few bad guys or protecting her palace with a shotgun, waiting for the villains to strike, Samantha Ruth Prabhu is the female star of the year. Prabhu pushes herself to the limit, discovering ever new reserves of resilience. Now if only she was given work worthy of her talent, in the way she was by directors Raj and DK, who transformed her in Season Two of The Family Man.

Kani Kusruti: Girls Will Be Girls

Kani Kusruti is brilliant as the abandoned wife, Prabha, in All We Imagine As Light but in Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls, as Anila, the lonely young mother, she is even better. Her eyes are hollowed out with restlessness, and her whole life is dedicated to waiting for her husband and daughter, neither of whom appreci­ate her. When her young daughter rejects her help while tying her saree, her face is a picture of quickly disguised hurt and when she rushes on her trusty scooty to save her from a gang of goons, she radiates concern and courage. And every time the young man in her daughter’s life gives her some attention, she is so grateful it is tragic.

Movies

Love was the underlying theme of the best movies of the year. The love and friendship of three disparate women, migrants in Mumbai; of a group of lost boys who literally held on to each other; and of a young woman yearning for learning.

All We Imagine As Light | Director: Payal Kapadia | Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam | Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi

The city is an illusion in the universally loved movie which is winning plaudits across the world. But its people are not. Its women, strangers to each other at first, are looking for love in dif­ferent places. But they finally find understanding in each other as they leave the city for the freedom of the countryside. There is no one here to prevent intimacy with a lover, or sit in judgement over a runaway husband, or even help return a snatched home. It is here that three women find solace. Heartbreak is inevitable, Kapadia’s gentle movie tells us, but at least when it is shared, the suffering lessens. Kapadia brings her fierce observation skills and a documentarian’s camera to follow her characters as they traverse the city by train, foot, and bus, living the everydayness of their existence, and yet finding meaning and purpose in their routine.

Laapataa Ladies | Director: Kiran Rao | Cast: Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta, Sparsh Shrivastava | Hindi

Two swapped wives, a woman who has forgotten to ask what she likes to eat and wants to reconcile with her mother-in-law; another solitary woman who runs a tea stall at a railway station and relishes the independence it gives her; a sweet boy trying very hard to impress his new bride; and a police officer with a marshmallow heart and a tough exterior. Kiran Rao’s Nirmal Pradesh is full of characters who carry secrets and surprises. As Ravi Kishan’s Shyam Manohar would say: “Wah bahut sundar hai (So beautiful).”

Manjummel Boys | Director: Chidambaram | Cast: Soubin Shahir, Sreenath Bhasi, Balu Varghese, Ganapathi | Malayalam

Every boy is a Manjummel boy, believes Chidambaram, the director of one of Malayalam cinema’s biggest hits. A group of lost boys, who are condemned by everyone, go on a holiday and refuse to leave their friend to die. Based on a true story, the movie is not merely an ode to male bonding but a tribute to every mother who has had faith in her ruffian son when no one else did. Who we are in a crisis defines us, and the Manjummel boys thrive in troubled situations.

Stree 2 | Director: Amar Kaushik | Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Abhishek Banerjee | Hindi

Trust a forest officer’s son to come up with folktales closest to nature. Kaushik’s world is full of vengeful spirits, angry animals and endangered species. Chanderi is in trouble again but this time it will take both a man and a woman to wake up the possessed men so they can return the hard-fought freedoms to their women. “Tu bhediya hai, Animal nahin (you’re a wolf, not Animal),” says Abhishek Banerjee’s eternal IAS aspirant to his friend in a cheeky comment on the toxic masculinity unleashed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s movie in 2023 where man turned out to be the biggest beast of all. Only a fantasy horror comedy can allow us to speak the truth of our times.

Amaran | Director: Rajkumar Periasamy | Cast: Sivakarthikeyan, Sai Pallavi, Rahul Bose, Bhuvan Arora | Tamil

You will leave when your task is done, but you have to live till you complete your task, says Major Mukund Varadarajan, played by Sivakarthikeyan, to his prospective father-in-law who fears his daughter marrying an Army officer. Death is their closest companion but this epic tale shows that love, however short it is, can transcend into immortality. Set against the backdrop of militancy in Kashmir, the film doesn’t deal in blacks or whites. Every side is examined with compassion and care. Suspect all, says the commanding officer, played with some depth by Rahul Bose, but respect all. One can only hope Mumbai film propagandists are taking note.

Television

There was a lot of entertainment on streaming platforms and a lot of it was not worth watching. In a sea of mediocrity, there were some series that stood out for the power of their storytelling and the passion of their creators.

Call Me Bae | Director: Collin D’Cunha | Cast: Ananya Panday, Vir Das, Gurfateh Pirzada, Varun Sood | Prime Video

Ananya Panday came into her own playing a rich South Delhi girl who is raised to marry a richer South Delhi boy. All goes well until she sleeps with her hunky trainer and is turned out of her mansion with only her luggage for company. Her move to Mumbai sees her becoming a working girl even if it means she has to learn some hard lessons—that white bread is not extinct like polio and that all handbags do not have pet names. How she conquers the media world and shows up her bullying boss, played with cheeky aban­don by Vir Das, makes for the rest of the coming-of-age story.

IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack | Director: Anubhav Sinha | Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Vijay Varma, Arvind Swamy | Netflix

It’s a moment in recent history that everyone involved would rather forget about. But IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack manages to bring it alive in all its com­plexity, from the politicians who would not take a decision to the bureaucrats who were waffling, from the terrorists who were playing hardball to the Afghan authorities who were playing both sides. The drama shifts from inside the plane and its heroic crew to the negotiations on the ground over eight days and is shot in close-ups that highlight the tension and anxiety felt by all the characters involved. It is a meticulous recreation of the turn of the millennium crisis, and guessing which actor played which character only added to the drama.

Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar | Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali | Cast: Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditi Rao Hydari | Netflix

Sanjay Leela Bhansali made his first series for streaming and it was every bit as excessive and indulgent as his movies are. With Manisha Koirala playing Mallikajaan in a fabulous return to form, Sonakshi Sinha getting under the skin of the devil-may-care Fareedan, and Aditi Rao Hydari finally getting her due as the beauteous Bibbojaan, the series had every­thing—heaving bosoms, tense standoffs, lascivious Englishmen, and lots of spectacular dances. The series faced much criticism for misrepresenting the courtesans of Lahore but not before it became part of the cultural conversation with everyone fancying a bit of the exaggerated Lahore tehzeeb (civility).

Poacher | Director: Richie Mehta | Cast: Nimisha Sajayan, Roshan Mathew, Dibyendu Bhattacharya | Prime Video

It’s a jungle out there and the animals are on the run from greedy humans. Poacher explores the connection between the global underworld and the forests of Kerala with their magnificent elephants who are killed for their ivory even as forest officers, activists and scientists try to unravel the nexus. Nimisha Sajayan and Roshan Mathew make for excellent collabora­tors with the brilliant Dibyendu Bhattacharya in yet another triumph for the creator of the iconic Delhi Crime.

 Freedom At Midnight | Director: Nikkhil Advani | Cast: Sidhant Gupta, Chirag Vohra, Rajendra Chawla, Arif Zakaria | SonyLIV

An implacable foe, two men who were impatient to take their people into a new nation, an old man who had led them to the point where they could look the British in the eye. Freedom at Midnight begins as the country is slowly being drenched in the blood of its people and continues until it doesn’t stop. The long night of Partition had to be borne before freedom could be had and the series based on the book by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre captures all the pain and paranoia. The clocks ticking in the background and the Mountbattens’ haste only adds to the sense of impending doom or dawn. Characters big and small get their due in Season One, even as we wait for Season Two.

About The Author

Kaveree Bamzai

Kaveree Bamzai is an author and a contributing writer with Open

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