This Article is From Apr 30, 2016

Shah Rukh Khan, Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan: Superstars and Their Choices

Shah Rukh Khan, Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan: Superstars and Their Choices

Shah Rukh Khan and Rajinikanth in stills from Ra.One and Enthiran.

Highlights

  • Mr Haasan's upcoming movie will see him reprise a role from Dasavatharam
  • Rajinikanth will next be seen in Enthiran 2
  • Shah Rukh Khan's last movie Fan starred him in dual roles
Chennai: Touted to be something of a watershed moment in the journey of a superstar - both on and off screen, SRK's Fan has sure sparked off some interesting debates. While the star's stupendous act in two antithetical roles has struck a chord with the critics, the same has apparently not set the box-office ringing. With news about the collections consistently dipping post the opening weekend, everyone suddenly seems to be having an opinion about Shah Rukh's decision to experiment outside of the usual 'Bollywood Biggie' conventions. Would the star - playing safe for quite some years now - continue to pick out challenging roles post this development or would he be content playing himself - the swooning romantic with that irresistible attitude - in 'minimum-guarantee' movies?

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma chose to address this burning question on Twitter by making comparisons with the legends of the South - Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. Calling Mr Haasan a bigger superstar than Rajinikanth before he decided to experiment by playing dwarf, fat, and tall characters, RGV warned SRK against making the "same blunder" that Mr Haasan did to "lose his stardom to Rajini", who otherwise "would have made for a better Rajinikanth". He went on to request SRK not to listen to misinformed advisers who are stopping him from becoming a Rajini like phenomenon. While a knee-jerk criticism of his statements might sound a tad presumptuous, a few observations on the concept of stardom down South and the way it has evolved over the years, might make 'drawing parallels in Bollywood or elsewhere' a more rewarding exercise.

Star wars
 

Image courtesy:iflickz.com


Let's start with some perspective. Almost three decades back, two roads diverged in Kollywood. Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan - both gifted actors from the K Balachander School of histrionics - were apparently at the road fork. While one, deciding to play to his serendipitous strengths, took the seemingly straightforward route to super stardom, the other ventured on the road less travelled in an attempt to carve a niche of his own. While one went on to squash several obligatory star-myths by virtue of his unflinching hard work, the other, over the years, made jaws drop with his bold acting choices and dauntless experimentation. While one redefined 'movie mania' with his elicitation of the war-cry 'Thalaivaa' for not just one, but at least a couple of generations, the other redefined forever the way people looked at films. While one took the US and UK box-office by storm, the other made the likes of Quentin Tarantino turn and take notice of the Indian film industry. While one became a raging phenomenon, the other continues to be the undisputed master of the craft. Though both legends have undoubtedly made Tamil Cinema what it is today, they have also seeded quite some imperative questions on the concept of stardom and its mysterious corollaries.

Rajinikanth's career graph is the kind of stuff you would normally associate with fairy-tales. There were certainly better looking actors around in that period. There were more nuanced performers. There were more talented dancers. No one in the audience, even in his wildest imagination, would have imagined that this man, who was literally scorching the screen as the stylish baddie, would go on to win millions of hearts as a larger-than-life hero. But it happened, thanks to his irresistible charisma. Something about him spelt so much excitement that he was forced to translate his uncanny knack of keeping millions of eyes glued at him to playing the 'do-gooder' protagonist. With fans going into frenzy over his charged-up mannerisms and on-screen indomitable persona, he started choosing movies that celebrated this lucrative angle. The gifted actor in him happened to surface very rarely and whenever it happened - whenever his skills were put to good use by a brilliant writer/ director at the helm of affairs - the resultant magic was there for the world to see. But then, this was not the norm, but only an exception. In reality, there is no denying the fact that Rajinikanth was made a victim of commerce, where he had to sacrifice his talents and technique for playing to the gallery. Could he have been this big a star - or in other words, a megastar - if he had chosen to experiment a little more and feed his actor alter-ego instincts on a more regular basis? No one really knows.

Meanwhile his contemporary, Kamal Haasan, after starting out as the unparalleled commercial star of the early 80s, had moved on to stretch the limits of a star actor. He was being everything an artist could be and acing almost all of them with nonchalant charm. As he continued to push the boundaries every year with unbelievable consistency, what he probably missed out on was outright celebrations of the super-cool star within him, replete with a capital S. The star continued to surface in many a film in varying shades (like the riveting transformation sequence in Vishwaroopam or the Raghavan instinct moment in Vettaiyadu Velaiyaadu), but in general, his overwhelming passion for innovation and the offbeat, made super stardom largely elusive. But then, he didn't seem like he cared. He renounced his stardom for a purpose, probably prioritizing his urge to make a difference before anything else. He alternated serious cinema with light-hearted comedies, but did he ever contemplate doing well-written, unabashed star vehicles more frequently after the nineties? Could he have?

The superstar paradigm

All of which bring us to the never-ending debate on stardom and its corollaries. Is the actor or star, such an odd combination, that it's possible to take only one of the two forward at the cost of the other? Would a star lose his mileage by occasionally making films that cater completely to the actor within? Is the superstar throne such a barbed, insecure dominion from where you can never aspire for anything more than the ordinary? Is the superstar tag too big a baggage, to play mere human roles in between and then return to the screen to command the same kind of crazy adulation? All these questions might have begot a 'Yes' a decade now, but has someone actually tried doing it now? For such rules to exist, don't we need an audience that is dependent solely on movies for entertainment? Hasn't that era passed? Do we take to the demigod status of stars that rhetorically now? Hasn't fandom morphed into more of a pop-culture symbol than a bare-minimum identity now?

In that sense, haven't we cheered for spirited celebrations of the star in an otherwise serious films like Vishwaroopam? Haven't we awed at superb celebrations of the actor in an otherwise unabashed star vehicle like Enthiran. These are cases of the writer acing the rope-walk, if only for the moment, within the basic structure of the film. But does this kind of flexibility extend to individual movies, where a star can be celebrated purely for his acting capabilities in one film and then allowed to put on his superstar hat again for his next? Or vice-versa? But then, again, has it been tried in our times? To be honest, a few have actually started to.
 

Image courtesy:iflickz.com


Topping them all is the man who arguably started it all. After years of being chained to the box-office and the fear of tampering with the alleged expectations of the audience, Rajinikanth could be asking the self-conferred 'trade pundits' to go to hell with Kabali. By choosing to work with a film-maker like Ranjith and opting to play a grounded role - without the need to shave decades off his age and mouth ostentatious crowd-pleasers - he might, in fact, be gifting himself his long-due watershed moment. With Ranjith indicating that Kabali would not be a quintessential Rajinikanth film, you know what its success would mean? The superstar would have made a successful transition to author-oriented roles. And in the case that 2.0 turns out to be a celebration of his superstar image, he would have achieved the seemingly impossible. The axiom that the star and the actor are mutually exclusive sets would have been proved wrong by the father of all stars, who incidentally had been referenced for being headstrong in his decision not to experiment. And look at the man who had apparently lost his stardom to the superstar. He has happily moved on to being his own version of a star on screen by choosing to reprise the super-hilarious Balram Naidu (from Dasavatharam) in a comedy-thriller. If one of the measures of a true star is the distance he can go as an actor while not letting go off of that mysterious aura, Mr Haasan continues to be a superstar in his own right.
 

Image courtesy:iflickz.com


And so, what do we want Shah Rukh Khan to be? With Salman Khan holding on resolutely to his larger-than-life image and Amir Khan showing no real penchant for super stardom, isn't there a faint reflection of the Rajnikanth and Kamal of the 90s here? Where does SRK stand now? Especially after a dud and a bold choice. Do we want him to wait another 25 years like Rajinikanth before attempting to free himself from the shackles of his image? Do we want him to turn a blind eye to box office pressures and continue experimenting? Or do we want him to attempt the seemingly impossible - be the bold actor and the Badshah of Bollywood at the same time? The answers lie with us.
 
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