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www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15...15indi.html
April 15, 2005
A Star the World Over but Almost Unknown Here
By RACHEL SALTZ
Correction Appended
If globalization has whetted America's appetite for the exotic - Jackie Chan and Hong Kong cinema, Japanese anime and manga - wide swaths of the world's pop culture have yet to pique our imagination. Consider, for example, Amitabh Bachchan, who has appeared in more than 150 movies since 1969 and was voted "actor of the millennium" in a 1999 BBC online poll, but is still charmed to find that he has an audience in the United States.
"I'm wonderstruck that my films should be here," he said in an interview this week, having arrived for a 12-film series, "Amitabh Bachchan: The Biggest Film Star in the World!," at the Walter Reade Theater. He also appears tonight at Alice Tully Hall. "It endorses the fact that people want to take seriously cinema in other parts of the world."
The undisputed king of Indian cinema in the 1970's and 80's, Mr. Bachchan (pronounced BUH-chun) is a megastar not only in his homeland but also in places like Nigeria, Egypt and Afghanistan. "Amitabh was the star who really internationalized Indian cinema," said Richard Peña, program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and an organizer of the retrospective. "When Amitabh became really big, in the 1970's, that's when Bollywood went to Africa and other parts of Asia and the Middle East."
Mr. Bachchan, now 62, has a commanding physical presence. His intense brown eyes, ringed with blue, can stare down a miscreant or disarm an audience with their sadness. And at 6 foot 3, he seems bigger on screen than everyone around him, with long, long legs that serve him equally well in his kick-heavy fight sequences and in dance scenes, where he has a playful charm - part clown, part dandy, part patrician on a romp. The patrician part is not surprising: his father was a famous Hindi poet and his family was close to the Nehru-Gandhi clan.
He created his most important screen persona in films like "Zanjeer" (1973), in which he plays a police inspector who seems to dispense justice single-handedly, and "Amar Akbar Anthony" (1977), in which he plays a Christian outlaw who in a wonderful statement of Indian secularism has a Hindu and a Muslim brother. Those characters are almost always spoken of and written about collectively as the Angry Young Man, but Mr. Bachchan does not think that is a good fit.
"These are wonderful epithets that journalists coin because it makes their writing easier," he said. "You have somebody going against the system, somebody taking on the establishment, and suddenly he's dubbed an Angry Young Man."
The characters resonated, he said, because they reflected a moment "in the political life of the country when it was felt by the common man that the state and the establishment were unable to perform their duties to the level desired by the people."
"When you have someone taking on the system," he added, "you begin to admire him, adore him, hero-worship him. It makes a good drama. And it makes good storytelling and great screenplays."
After a period in the 90's when he was given weak parts in weak films, Mr. Bachchan finds himself in the midst of a career renaissance, thanks to the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," of which he was the host. Everyone advised him against doing it, he said, but "I gave it a shot, and suddenly it became so big." So big that he was again offered good roles in good films.
In "Dev" (2004), one of the best of the new bunch, Mr. Bachchan plays a police commissioner, a version of that young man who took on the system, but who has himself now taken on gravitas and moral weight. He fights corruption, and above all wants to uphold the Indian Constitution and find equal justice for Muslims and Hindus.
Does Mr. Bachchan, with all his status, feel a responsibility to take on roles like this? "As actors we must do what is asked of us to do," he said. "If perchance it happens to be representative of something that is moral and good for society, then we suddenly seem to take the credit. But it's just another role."
"Amitabh Bachchan: The Biggest Film Star in the World!" continues through Tuesday at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. Tickets $10; $7 for students; $6 for Film Society of Lincoln Center members; $5 for 65+ at weekday matinees and for children 12 and younger; information, (212) 875-5600. Mr. Bachchan is appearing tonight at Alice Tully Hall at 7:30. Tickets $60; information, (212) 875-5050.
Correction: April 16, 2005, Saturday:
A picture caption in Weekend yesterday with an article about Amitabh Bachchan, an Indian movie star who is the subject of a film series at the Walter Reade Theater in Manhattan, misidentified the actress shown with him in a scene from the 1973 movie "Abhimaan." She was Jaya Bhaduri, his wife. (Subeer Kumar is the name of the character Mr. Bachchan played.)
source:
www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15...15indi.html
April 15, 2005
A Star the World Over but Almost Unknown Here
By RACHEL SALTZ
Correction Appended
If globalization has whetted America's appetite for the exotic - Jackie Chan and Hong Kong cinema, Japanese anime and manga - wide swaths of the world's pop culture have yet to pique our imagination. Consider, for example, Amitabh Bachchan, who has appeared in more than 150 movies since 1969 and was voted "actor of the millennium" in a 1999 BBC online poll, but is still charmed to find that he has an audience in the United States.
"I'm wonderstruck that my films should be here," he said in an interview this week, having arrived for a 12-film series, "Amitabh Bachchan: The Biggest Film Star in the World!," at the Walter Reade Theater. He also appears tonight at Alice Tully Hall. "It endorses the fact that people want to take seriously cinema in other parts of the world."
The undisputed king of Indian cinema in the 1970's and 80's, Mr. Bachchan (pronounced BUH-chun) is a megastar not only in his homeland but also in places like Nigeria, Egypt and Afghanistan. "Amitabh was the star who really internationalized Indian cinema," said Richard Peña, program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and an organizer of the retrospective. "When Amitabh became really big, in the 1970's, that's when Bollywood went to Africa and other parts of Asia and the Middle East."
Mr. Bachchan, now 62, has a commanding physical presence. His intense brown eyes, ringed with blue, can stare down a miscreant or disarm an audience with their sadness. And at 6 foot 3, he seems bigger on screen than everyone around him, with long, long legs that serve him equally well in his kick-heavy fight sequences and in dance scenes, where he has a playful charm - part clown, part dandy, part patrician on a romp. The patrician part is not surprising: his father was a famous Hindi poet and his family was close to the Nehru-Gandhi clan.
He created his most important screen persona in films like "Zanjeer" (1973), in which he plays a police inspector who seems to dispense justice single-handedly, and "Amar Akbar Anthony" (1977), in which he plays a Christian outlaw who in a wonderful statement of Indian secularism has a Hindu and a Muslim brother. Those characters are almost always spoken of and written about collectively as the Angry Young Man, but Mr. Bachchan does not think that is a good fit.
"These are wonderful epithets that journalists coin because it makes their writing easier," he said. "You have somebody going against the system, somebody taking on the establishment, and suddenly he's dubbed an Angry Young Man."
The characters resonated, he said, because they reflected a moment "in the political life of the country when it was felt by the common man that the state and the establishment were unable to perform their duties to the level desired by the people."
"When you have someone taking on the system," he added, "you begin to admire him, adore him, hero-worship him. It makes a good drama. And it makes good storytelling and great screenplays."
After a period in the 90's when he was given weak parts in weak films, Mr. Bachchan finds himself in the midst of a career renaissance, thanks to the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," of which he was the host. Everyone advised him against doing it, he said, but "I gave it a shot, and suddenly it became so big." So big that he was again offered good roles in good films.
In "Dev" (2004), one of the best of the new bunch, Mr. Bachchan plays a police commissioner, a version of that young man who took on the system, but who has himself now taken on gravitas and moral weight. He fights corruption, and above all wants to uphold the Indian Constitution and find equal justice for Muslims and Hindus.
Does Mr. Bachchan, with all his status, feel a responsibility to take on roles like this? "As actors we must do what is asked of us to do," he said. "If perchance it happens to be representative of something that is moral and good for society, then we suddenly seem to take the credit. But it's just another role."
"Amitabh Bachchan: The Biggest Film Star in the World!" continues through Tuesday at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. Tickets $10; $7 for students; $6 for Film Society of Lincoln Center members; $5 for 65+ at weekday matinees and for children 12 and younger; information, (212) 875-5600. Mr. Bachchan is appearing tonight at Alice Tully Hall at 7:30. Tickets $60; information, (212) 875-5050.
Correction: April 16, 2005, Saturday:
A picture caption in Weekend yesterday with an article about Amitabh Bachchan, an Indian movie star who is the subject of a film series at the Walter Reade Theater in Manhattan, misidentified the actress shown with him in a scene from the 1973 movie "Abhimaan." She was Jaya Bhaduri, his wife. (Subeer Kumar is the name of the character Mr. Bachchan played.)
source:
www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15...15indi.html
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