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Wednesday, September 18, 2024
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BOLLYWOOD HEROINE (H)
EDITOR'S PICK
`Heroine`:
Kareena`s powerful performance
Rating: ****
Somewhere deep within the corroding flamboyance of filmdom, there is a tale of
heartbreaking compromises and immorality tucked away from the naked, tearless
eye. Madhur Bhandarkar nearly gets to the nerve centre of that world, and then
pulls back just before he`s really gotten there.
Heroine is an intriguingly unfinished film - partly in the rapidfire
mood of a game show and partly like an elegiac melody played gently on an
antique piano with immaculate fingers. It lacks a centre, sometimes even a focus
as it tries to cram in too many incidents, episodes, scandals, controversies and
plain absurdities that are an integral part of Bollywood, so much so that the
first hour or so gets suffocatingly airtight.
And then you realize towards the end, that the world of the superstar Mahi
Khanna traps the star, makes her a puppet of success, traps her in a web of
deceit and finally throws her into a whirlwind of vaporous deceptions.
The closing moments have that gut-wrenching element which made Bhandarkar`s
Chandni Bar, Page 3 and Fashion among the
more sensitive dramas in recent times.
We see Mahi, shattered forlorn and bereft, trapped in a car surrounded by
merciless television journalists. As the haunting background score by
Salim-Sulaiman builds up to a shattering crescendo, Mahi`s hands fold together
in a plea of mercy. In moments our hearts bleed for Mahi.
God help those who are cursed with stardom. They first have to struggle to get
there. And then they must continue to fight to cling to their place. And then,
as Govind Namdeo playing Mahi`s quietly faithful secretary tells her: An
actress` life-span is by its very nature limited.
Not that we haven`t heard such wisdom on the show world before. The dialogues
could have been far more powerful. Instead they try to shock with a casual
candour that fails to ignite the scenes.
Kareena Kapoor in the best performance of her career so far, leads Mahi`s
character through the murky labyrinth of ambition, rivalry and self-destructive
tricks of survival in the rat race. Though her character is inconsistent
(suffering, we are told, from bipolar disorder or is it just the writer`s
vagaries?) Kareena furnishes the heroine`s character with a rare vulnerability
and an exceptional inner life.
In the film`s rawest moments when the star`s mask peels off completely,
Kareena`s face shows that stricken expression of naked panic and abject solitude
that one last saw in the performance of Tabu in Mira Nair`s The
Namesake after her husband`s sudden death.
Stardom kills you bit by bit. Kareena bravely undertakes Mahi Khanna`s perilous
journey from the top to the bottom of the star-ladder. This is Kareena`s most
fearless performance to date.
Interestingly this is the second film in three weeks where a desperate falling
star resorts to the dirtiest of measures to retrieve her stardom. Raaz ki baat
to yeh hai ki Heroine sidesteps all the cliches of the film industry
even while plonking the plot pat into those predictable places.
So does Bhandarkar`s film exaggerate the sham that underlines the shindig of
showbiz? The answer is, yes. Heroine is guilty of gross excesses.
There are too many unnecessary characters,specially in the first-half bustling
around in clumsily staged ramp shows, awards functions and filmy parties
claiming our attention.
Once Bhandarkar and his co-writers Manoj Tyagi, Nilanjan Iyenger and Anuradha
Tiwary get over their look-we-know-showbiz-in-and-out fetish, the narrative
finally settles down to telling us Mahi`s story vis-a-vis the two men in her
life, the star Aryan Khanna (Arjun Rampal) and the cricketer Angad Pal (Randeep
Hooda).
Though Rampal`s character reminded me of Arbaaz Khan in Bhandarkar`s
Fashion, both are characters despite their uni-dimensional nature
and are brought to life by two of our most interesting actors today.
At least three other stand-out performances that burnish Bhandarkar`s flawed but
fabulous film are those by Divya Dutt playing Mahi`s ruthless business manager
who occasionally surprises herself by feeling real emotions for the fast-fading
actress, Ranveer Shorey as the eccentric egomaniacal arthouse filmmaker from
Bengal and Shahana Goswami as Mahi`s Bengali co-actor in one of the film`s
finest episodes when Mahi, in a defiant attempt to show she is star who can act,
has a disastrous trust with realistic cinema.
In fact, Shahana and Kareena share some of the film`s most special moments.
Bhandarkar over-juices some of the film`s sensual possibilities, under-develops
some of the more engrossing characters, for example the yesteryears` star played
by Helen.
The love-making scenes are done fitfully and hastily. And the dialogues (most of
them sounding profound without actually meaning anything really substantial) are
spoken by the actors in the tone of a radio play.
But Heroine still works, and works wonderfully in some places.
There`s an inconsistency to the storytelling that works effectively in putting
the protagonist`s deeply flawed and fractured character into a pulsating
perspective wherein we can no longer distinguish between the fatal flaws of the
main character and the action and reactions that have been written to define her
flawed existence.
You come away from the film haunted by Kareena Kapoor who plays the disembodied
diva with devastating honesty. Bhandarkar rips into the artifice of showbiz with
vigour and tenderness. Like its heroine, the film is flawed, but also
bewildering, beguiling and yes, beautiful.
Actress Kirti Kulhari, who shot to fame with "Pink", is now playing the protagonist in National Film Award-winning filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar's forthcoming film "Indu Sarkar". She says as a performer, building a character is an interesting process. Read More
Thefilm revolves around the life of a once successful film actress Mahi Khanna, whose career is on the decline. Though speculated to be based on the lives of yester year divas like Madhubala and Marilyn Monroe, Bhandarkar has denied the reports saying that the movie is a “contemporary film which reveals the underbelly of the movie industry and its well-kept secrets.” Bhandarkar said that he considers the movie his magnum opus.
