The Angry Young Man is out of work. In what seems to be a global cinematic trend, story writers and directors are redefining popular genres to include real, dark, even crazed protagonists. And they seem to be hogging all the awards too
The Angry Young Man is out of work. In what seems to be a global cinematic trend, story writers and directors are redefining popular genres to include real, dark, even crazed protagonists. And they seem to be hogging all the awards too
Why do I always fall in love with the wrong guy," sobbed a friend over the phone the other day, just as she does once every few months. Her routine distress now holds no surprises. She'll swear off men forever, take up pottery or a foreign language and spend the next few months soul-searching within paperback copies of Paulo Coelho's best.
Then...she'll call again
"Duniya ke saare galat aadmi meri hi kismat mein the," laments homicidal Suzanne in this week's Vishal Bhardwaj release, 7 Khoon Maaf. And though the auditorium is plunged in darkness, you see heads bobbing in agreement. No longer is Suzanne the murdering wench the trailers made her out to be. Instantly, she's among sistersu00a0-- laugh as they may, this group feels her pain.
It's this connection with the new breed of imperfect, and hence, simply-human characters that's appealing to cinema-goers, says director-screenwriter Sudhir Mishra whose, Yeh Saali Zindagi was peppered with a group of off-beat characters, all of whom Mishra describes as, "People who've been hardened by circumstances and who are struggling against the odds, trying desperately to be good. Life doesn't make it easy... not for them, not for anyone in the audience." 
This week's release 7 Khoon Maaf sees Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra
play a femme fatale who murders her seven husbands in what some say
is an award-winning performance
In the world around us, it's not easy to distinguish heroes from villains. Mishra offers an exampleu00a0-- Arun of Yeh Saali... (played by Irrfan Khan). "On the one hand, there's his greed, an intrinsic human trait, and on the other, there's his intense love for this woman, which exposes a gentler, vulnerable side to his nature."
In a country where advertisements and formulaic scripts have, for over six decades, reinforced the standard Cinderella-Prince Charming notion of love, it's strange to hear a director say, "Idealised stories set bad examples." But, Mishra argues, it's because they set you up for heartbreak. They encourage unreal expectations. This side of the screen, everyone's struggling to find balance in a world that's not always fair.
That's not me!
Cyrus Mistry and Tina Sethna clearly didn't view the world as a fair place. Dreamed up by debutant director Homi Adajania in 2006, and played by Saif Ali Khan and Simone Singh, their mercenary tale christened Being Cyrus was received with equal parts of enthusiasm and dismay. "Most people related to the characters, claiming they've seen strains in people they know. And then, during a 'meet-the-audience' screening, I was verbally attacked by a gentleman who took great umbrage to what he felt was a disturbing portrayal of dysfunctional characters. He claimed no one behaved like this in 'real' life," remembers Adajania. Perhaps the character sketches were too graphic, too 'real' life. But not for critics.
Critics are loving it
Barney's Version which won Paul Giamatti Best Actor at the 68 Annual Golden Globe Awards this January is the story of Panofsky, a deeply-yet-not-unrealistically-flawed fellow whose failings are overshadowed by those of his best friend, at whose sudden disappearance, fingers get pointed at him.
But under all the dark layers, the plot is essentially a modern-day love story, with Panofsky constantly falling in and out of love. Married at first to a mentally unstable woman, he meets the love of his life at his second wedding, and while he does eventually tie the proverbial knot with the seemingly-normal Miriam, complexities of human nature force them to confront the fact that though clearly compatible, they may not yet have found love.
"But that isn't me!" you may protest, as Adajania's critic did. And sure, we don't all take to hacking people to pieces at the first sign of trouble. But perhaps, that's exactly why flawed protagonists are gaining popularity. "They allow us to live out our most deep-seated fantasies vicariously," Adajania suggests.
At a recent award ceremony, actress Vidya Balan held the Best Actress trophy close to her heart, smirking about how she would have sexually exploited two men in one film years ago, if she'd known it would bring her accolades.
The tongue-in-cheek acceptance speech in fact, speaks of more than Balan's sense of humour. Krishna Verma, the forgotten widow, the small-town femme fatale that Balan played in Ishqiya (2010) won the actress three of the most coveted awards this year.
"Aren't we fed up of watching women who are flawless in morality -- perfect mothers, perfect wives?" asks Abhishek Choubey, Ishqiya's writer-director.
"I've known women like her, unabashed about their sexual identity. More than anything else, I wanted to be truthful to the way I portrayed my heroine," he says about his sexually liberated heroine who effortlessly seduces an older man and his nephew.
Choubey's words ring familiar as one recalls director Anurag Kashyap in interviews around the release of Dev D (2009), the film that lent a modern-day spin to Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay's classic Bengali novel, Devdas.
In one interview, Kashyap claimed that to him, the real heroes of the original story were Paro and Chandramukhi, admitting that the self-destructive path his protagonist Dev (Abhay Deol) trekked, was not completely unfamiliar to him.
Many believed Kashyap's was a risky interpretation of a classic, and many more were shocked by Deol agreeing to take on the role of a junkie-lover early in his film career. However, six Filmfare Awards including the Critics' Award for Best Female Actor (Mahie Gill) and Best Supporting Actor, Female (Kalki Koechlin) proved that audiences felt differently.
Clearly, for directors now, it's a whole new world -- one that's abuzz with crackling potential as actors step out of their comfort zones. David O Russell, director of the biographical film on boxer Mickey Ward, The Fighter (2010) that was nominated for six Golden Globe Awards, three Chicago Film Critics' Awards and seven Academy Awards, expressed his delight with the new breed of talent in an interview, in which, speaking of actor Amy Adams, who plays Ward's love interest in the film, he said, "There are very few things that a director can have at his disposal better than an actress who's dying to break type. Amy was extremely motivated to play a sexy bitch and that's who the character of Charlene is."
Adams isn't the only one. Black Swan (2010) director Darren Aronofsky has taken true-to-life pressures that are born of a fierce ambition, and moulded them into a spine-chilling psychological thriller. His movie which was been nominated for 15 British Academy Film Awards this year centres on the classical ballet, Swan Lake. In it, Hollywood star Natalie Portman (Nina), at first epitomises the sweet innocence that's conventionally associated with the dance-form -- she is the ideal White Swan.
But when threatened by the talent of Lily, a new recruit in the dance company, the ferocity of Nina's ambition takes centre-stage, forcing her to tread down the twisted path of self-discovery, as viewers begin to wonder if she's losing her mind.
In an adaptation of Graham Greene's 1938 novel, Brighton Rock, director Rowan Joffe is happy that unlike Richard Attenborough's 1947 film, his 2010 production allows him freedom to portray the violence of anti-protag Pinkie (Sam Riley) completely. "The essence is that Pinkie wants to kill a girl he fancies. He's a teenager full of hormones and now I can show the truth of that," Joffe told the Daily Mail.
With complex characters emerging out of the shadows to claim their place in the sun, does the macho hero have a fighting chance? Adajania seems to think so. "The perfect hero's job is secure," says the director. "He serves an integral purpose... he offers audiences a dream... the escape they desire. He gives the man on the street the courage to go on, to fight his daily battles... he assures him that at the end all will be well."
Maybe he is right. Or maybe this is in fact, the era of the Dark Knight. With inputs by Subhash K Jha
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