83, Shershaah and Sardar Udham

There is clearly a  pattern in the Filmfare Awards this year. All the major  winners are real-life heroes. Ranveer Singh plays Kapil Dev in 83 and he bags the best actor award. Vicky Kaushal plays Sardar Udham Singh and he is the best actor in the critics’ category.

Now here is  the thing: Why two categories for best actors? Is it to honour the popular and the more discerning performance? If this is the yardstick, Siddharth Malhotra should have won the award for Shershaah in the popular category, and not Ranveer Singh, as Shershaah was a far more popular film than 83.

It was clearly a big night for Amazon Prime and by extension, the digital sphere. Amazon’s two big biopics of 2021, Sardar Udham and Shershaah, scored big. Shershaah won the best picture, the best director, though not the best actor,  which makes no sense whatsoever. By all means, honour, the less deserving, but not at the cost of the deserving.

Nonetheless, the dominance in the awards of the two biopics Shershaah and Sardar Udham, was warmly welcomed. We need to honour genuine heroes and not the ones who call the photographs first, do their good deed of the year only when the shutterbugs are active.

The best actress category too left me divided in my enthusiasm. Kriti Sanon for best actress in Mimi is  a judicious choice. Sanon’s performance as a surrogate mother was feisty, spontaneous and quite engaging. Significantly, Mimi too is a  sort of a biopic as it is based on a real life character.

This brings me to Vidya Balan getting the critics’ best actress for Sherni. It is  sad that we reflexively honour our greats without considering the specific  performance.  Everyone sang hosannas for Amitabh  Bachchan in Jhund when his heart was very clearly and visibly not in it. Tabu gets raves even if she  sneezes. Her recent  performances in Mira Nair’s A Suitable  Boy and Anees Bazmee’s Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 lacked her habitual spark and verve. In fact, she was hamming in the latter.

Actors honoured at the awards have become sparks in the dark. There is little  to honour each year, so they honour the best of a compromised lot. Vidya Balan in Sherni was stiff, distant and disengaged. As a forest officer battling sexism and eco-devastation, she seemed preoccupied, as though wondering if she remembered to put off the stove before leaving home or not. Mukul Chadda in a brief, underwritten role, as her husband, was so into it.

Honour the greats, by all means. But for the right performances. Honour Vidya for Jalsa, not Sherni.

Oh, one more thing: both the debutant awards were given to outsiders, Ehan Bhat in 99 songs and Sharvari Wagh in Bunty Aur Babli 2, not to star children. I think that says something.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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