In 2014, the men in the Hindi movies barely grew up while the women leapt ahead.
For a change, actresses feature prominently in the year's noteworthy films. In Vikas Bahl’s Queen, a middle-class Delhi woman who is jilted days before her wedding decides against scrapping her plans for a European honeymoon. Instead, she sets out to conquer the continent all by herself.
Played with unerring timing, depth and feeling by Kangana Ranaut, Rani is a character for the ages, even though her triumphant and inspiring self-discovery is strictly non-sexual. Bahl pushes many envelopes, but when Rani meets a seriously dishy Italian chef, she's allowed only a kiss.
The lament that actresses have far less to do even though they are indispensable to a movie’s fate is a global one. To counter this, there's the “women’s picture”, which works on the principle that “If you can’t travel with men on equal terms, you should take over the ladies’ compartment”.
Omung Kumar’s Mary Kom, a fawning biopic of the iconic female pugilist, is the most obvious manifestation of the women’s picture. Priyanka Chopra’s Kom is quite literally a fighter. Chopra is an intensely glamourous woman whose face and body have changed magically over time, but like the doughty boxer from Mary Kom, she has the ability to bounce off the ropes.
In Ali Abbas Zafar's Gunday, Chopra was perfectly cast as a nightclub dancer who balances two overgrown boys. In Mary Kom, a hyperventilating sports drama with questionable casting choices (non-Manipuri actors play Manipuri characters) and shameless sentimentality, Chopra pummels her way out of the irrelevance that threatens women in show business.
The year also saw other women muscling their way into the boy’s club. Sai Kabir's Revolver Rani stars Ranaut as a cross between bandit Phoolan Devi and a heartland Beatrix Kiddo. But Ranaut’s gun-waving is eclipsed by the better-etched male characters in this Kill Bill-inspired movie. Pradeep Sarkar's Mardaani, a middling comeback star vehicle for the talented Rani Mukerji, also finds the actress cussing and kicking.
Deepika's lukewarm year
Marquee queen Deepika Padukone, who pushed her immediate rival Katrina Kaif into the shadows last year, had a relatively lukewarm 2014 with Homi Adajania's Finding Fanny and Farah Khan's Happy New Year. Padukone’s easygoing nature is on ample display in Adajania’s satire about Goan Christians. Happy New Year, Farah Khan’s latest paean to the wonder that is Shah Rukh Khan, stays in the safe zone that ensures Padukone’s preeminent status in the movie trade. If she continues to mix A-list with mid-budget in this fashion, Padukone might be able to carve out a longer career than is usually permitted to leading women (usually, a few years before marriage to a co-star, producer, or a wealthy fan).
Padukone already has competition in the form of 21-year-old Alia Bhatt, the beautiful, precocious, confident, chirpy and chic veteran of three movies. Bhatt made her debut with Student of the Year in 2012 but chose to wait a whole year – a shockingly long time in a fickle business – to flower. She displays her acting chops – half-done, but coming along nicely – in Imtiaz Ali’s Highway, puts her co-star Arjun Kapoor in his place in Abhishek Verman's mega-hit culture-clash drama 2 States, and vibes wonderfully with Varun Dhawan in Shashank Khaitan's Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania.
Two of the most memorable women’s roles were from the same movie. The lovable scamps from Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya, played by Arshad Warsi and Naseeruddin Shah, meet their match in the sequel Dedh Ishqiya. Madhuri Dixit Nene’s widow, along with her associate played by Huma Qureshi, seems to be shopping for a new husband, but she has a few tricks up her embroidered sleeve. The movie suggests an alternative reading of the relationship between the two women. Are they partners in crime, or in life? Dedh Ishqiya is intelligent enough to make its point with grace and subtlety.
The original Ishqiya actress didn't quite imprint herself on the popular imagination this year, but she tries hard as only she can. Samar Shaikh’s sweet-tempered comedy Bobby Jasoos stars Vidya Balan as an intrepid detective from Hyderabad’s Walled City. The movie has many well-observed moments, and it might have benefitted from a better release plan (it opened during Ramzan, when the sizeable chunk of Muslim audiences abstain from watching films). At any rate, it is the superior Hyderabad Walled City movie of the year over Habib Faisal's Daawat-e-Ishq.
Faisal’s deep-fried serving on dowry features one of three performances this year by the watchable and estimable Parineeti Chopra. She also appears as the overdressed lover of a soulful assassin in Shaad Ali's Kill Dill and the Indian version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype in Vinil Mathew's Hasee Toh Phasee. For all her rebelliousness, Chopra’s eccentric character, in keeping with the Hollywood archetype, has no mind of her own and needs the man to round off her edges. Mathew’s enjoyably meandering comedy rests on the shoulders of its leading man, Siddharth Malhotra.
The third alumnus from Student of the Year after Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan, Malhotra is developing into an interesting actor with the ability to suggest passion and tension beneath his pretty boy surface. He gently stole the show in Hasee Toh Phasee, taking his place in a short list of noteworthy male performances by actors this year.
Most of the men on the A-list either stuck to the task of lining their bank accounts or embarrassing themselves and their fan base. The films headlined included Kick, Bang Bang!, Happy New Year, Entertainment and Action Jackson. While there is no case to be made for greater censorship of the movies, there is an argument in favour of better certification and of restricting movies that feature gratuitous violence and adolescent-level double entendre to adults rather than kids.
Between the seniors and the juniors, very few men in the middle left an impression. Imran Khan’s future has been in grave doubt since last year’s turkey Gori Tere Pyaar Mein, and he sat out 2014. So did Ranbir Kapoor, whose absence from the screen gave his rivals breathing room. The charismatic star looks all set to conquer 2015 with Bombay Velvet and Jagga Jasoos, but already, the field has become somewhat more crowded.
Emraan Hashmi’s severe histrionic limitations were on display in Raja Natwarlal and Ungli. One of his comrades in Ungli had a far more interesting year. Randeep Hooda has had a rocky career despite a devoted female fan following that has patiently suffered through his excesses in the hope that beauty and brains will some day materialise in the same place.
They did in Highway. Imtiaz Ali’s expansion of an episode of the same name that he directed for Zee TV’s television series Rishtey in 1999 mixes the banal with the profound. The relationship that develops between a kidnapper and his wealthy target is from the realm of adolescent feeling that is Ali's specialty. Yet, Highway might also be Ali’s most grown-up film to date. Hooda’s damaged soul, who seeks redemption in the arms of an equally wounded younger woman, is one of the year’s strongest male performances. His character’s mix of earthiness and vulnerability, and his breakdown in the face of unbearable love, finally confirms what Hooda’s fan base knew all along: the camera loves this man, and he is capable of loving it back.
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For a change, actresses feature prominently in the year's noteworthy films. In Vikas Bahl’s Queen, a middle-class Delhi woman who is jilted days before her wedding decides against scrapping her plans for a European honeymoon. Instead, she sets out to conquer the continent all by herself.
Played with unerring timing, depth and feeling by Kangana Ranaut, Rani is a character for the ages, even though her triumphant and inspiring self-discovery is strictly non-sexual. Bahl pushes many envelopes, but when Rani meets a seriously dishy Italian chef, she's allowed only a kiss.
The lament that actresses have far less to do even though they are indispensable to a movie’s fate is a global one. To counter this, there's the “women’s picture”, which works on the principle that “If you can’t travel with men on equal terms, you should take over the ladies’ compartment”.
Omung Kumar’s Mary Kom, a fawning biopic of the iconic female pugilist, is the most obvious manifestation of the women’s picture. Priyanka Chopra’s Kom is quite literally a fighter. Chopra is an intensely glamourous woman whose face and body have changed magically over time, but like the doughty boxer from Mary Kom, she has the ability to bounce off the ropes.
In Ali Abbas Zafar's Gunday, Chopra was perfectly cast as a nightclub dancer who balances two overgrown boys. In Mary Kom, a hyperventilating sports drama with questionable casting choices (non-Manipuri actors play Manipuri characters) and shameless sentimentality, Chopra pummels her way out of the irrelevance that threatens women in show business.
The year also saw other women muscling their way into the boy’s club. Sai Kabir's Revolver Rani stars Ranaut as a cross between bandit Phoolan Devi and a heartland Beatrix Kiddo. But Ranaut’s gun-waving is eclipsed by the better-etched male characters in this Kill Bill-inspired movie. Pradeep Sarkar's Mardaani, a middling comeback star vehicle for the talented Rani Mukerji, also finds the actress cussing and kicking.
Deepika's lukewarm year
Marquee queen Deepika Padukone, who pushed her immediate rival Katrina Kaif into the shadows last year, had a relatively lukewarm 2014 with Homi Adajania's Finding Fanny and Farah Khan's Happy New Year. Padukone’s easygoing nature is on ample display in Adajania’s satire about Goan Christians. Happy New Year, Farah Khan’s latest paean to the wonder that is Shah Rukh Khan, stays in the safe zone that ensures Padukone’s preeminent status in the movie trade. If she continues to mix A-list with mid-budget in this fashion, Padukone might be able to carve out a longer career than is usually permitted to leading women (usually, a few years before marriage to a co-star, producer, or a wealthy fan).
Padukone already has competition in the form of 21-year-old Alia Bhatt, the beautiful, precocious, confident, chirpy and chic veteran of three movies. Bhatt made her debut with Student of the Year in 2012 but chose to wait a whole year – a shockingly long time in a fickle business – to flower. She displays her acting chops – half-done, but coming along nicely – in Imtiaz Ali’s Highway, puts her co-star Arjun Kapoor in his place in Abhishek Verman's mega-hit culture-clash drama 2 States, and vibes wonderfully with Varun Dhawan in Shashank Khaitan's Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania.
Two of the most memorable women’s roles were from the same movie. The lovable scamps from Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya, played by Arshad Warsi and Naseeruddin Shah, meet their match in the sequel Dedh Ishqiya. Madhuri Dixit Nene’s widow, along with her associate played by Huma Qureshi, seems to be shopping for a new husband, but she has a few tricks up her embroidered sleeve. The movie suggests an alternative reading of the relationship between the two women. Are they partners in crime, or in life? Dedh Ishqiya is intelligent enough to make its point with grace and subtlety.
The original Ishqiya actress didn't quite imprint herself on the popular imagination this year, but she tries hard as only she can. Samar Shaikh’s sweet-tempered comedy Bobby Jasoos stars Vidya Balan as an intrepid detective from Hyderabad’s Walled City. The movie has many well-observed moments, and it might have benefitted from a better release plan (it opened during Ramzan, when the sizeable chunk of Muslim audiences abstain from watching films). At any rate, it is the superior Hyderabad Walled City movie of the year over Habib Faisal's Daawat-e-Ishq.
Faisal’s deep-fried serving on dowry features one of three performances this year by the watchable and estimable Parineeti Chopra. She also appears as the overdressed lover of a soulful assassin in Shaad Ali's Kill Dill and the Indian version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype in Vinil Mathew's Hasee Toh Phasee. For all her rebelliousness, Chopra’s eccentric character, in keeping with the Hollywood archetype, has no mind of her own and needs the man to round off her edges. Mathew’s enjoyably meandering comedy rests on the shoulders of its leading man, Siddharth Malhotra.
The third alumnus from Student of the Year after Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan, Malhotra is developing into an interesting actor with the ability to suggest passion and tension beneath his pretty boy surface. He gently stole the show in Hasee Toh Phasee, taking his place in a short list of noteworthy male performances by actors this year.
Most of the men on the A-list either stuck to the task of lining their bank accounts or embarrassing themselves and their fan base. The films headlined included Kick, Bang Bang!, Happy New Year, Entertainment and Action Jackson. While there is no case to be made for greater censorship of the movies, there is an argument in favour of better certification and of restricting movies that feature gratuitous violence and adolescent-level double entendre to adults rather than kids.
Between the seniors and the juniors, very few men in the middle left an impression. Imran Khan’s future has been in grave doubt since last year’s turkey Gori Tere Pyaar Mein, and he sat out 2014. So did Ranbir Kapoor, whose absence from the screen gave his rivals breathing room. The charismatic star looks all set to conquer 2015 with Bombay Velvet and Jagga Jasoos, but already, the field has become somewhat more crowded.
Emraan Hashmi’s severe histrionic limitations were on display in Raja Natwarlal and Ungli. One of his comrades in Ungli had a far more interesting year. Randeep Hooda has had a rocky career despite a devoted female fan following that has patiently suffered through his excesses in the hope that beauty and brains will some day materialise in the same place.
They did in Highway. Imtiaz Ali’s expansion of an episode of the same name that he directed for Zee TV’s television series Rishtey in 1999 mixes the banal with the profound. The relationship that develops between a kidnapper and his wealthy target is from the realm of adolescent feeling that is Ali's specialty. Yet, Highway might also be Ali’s most grown-up film to date. Hooda’s damaged soul, who seeks redemption in the arms of an equally wounded younger woman, is one of the year’s strongest male performances. His character’s mix of earthiness and vulnerability, and his breakdown in the face of unbearable love, finally confirms what Hooda’s fan base knew all along: the camera loves this man, and he is capable of loving it back.
