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Mumbai, Mar 28: So glad Konkona Sharma was singled out for her sunny performance in Omkara. Good for her. She certainly deserves all the praise. In a place like Patna Konkona's films have hardly been seen. In fact I jokingly refer to Konkona and Rahul Bose as 'Mr & Mrs Anonymous'. Neither of Aparna Sen's films Mr & Mrs Iyer nor 19 Park Avenue featuring the two were released in Bihar.
In the non-metropolitan areas stars do rule the roost completely…And for them Kareena, not Konkona is the real female star of Omkara.
Konkona steals the show not because she's such a skilled little devil (she is that!) but because she has all the rabble-rousing gallery-wooing lines and scenes.
In their scenes together Kareena is as still as a frozen breeze. Konkona prances like a butterfly screaming and giggling.
No bumper prizes for guessing whom the audience is busy watching. Somehow the louder more aggressively -toned performance always gets all audiences' notice and sometimes even all the awards.
Do Indian audiences have a penchant for silences?
Years ago Amitabh Bachchan with his thunderous dialogues stole the thunder from Rajesh Khanna in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Namak Haraam thereby unwittingly precipitating the Khanna's fall from grace.
Years later AB was at the receiving end when the mighty Dilip Kumar played his dad in Ramesh Sippy's Shakti.
Every reviewer said the senior actor had stolen the show completely from his younger co-star. The fact of the 'matter' is it was Salim-Javed's crowd-swelling lines that gave Dilip Saab's formidable presence a marked edge.
It's so important for Hindi cinema to learn to respect the more silent performance. Otherwise we can kiss goodbye our chances of making a mark in international cinema. As long as the vaudeville brand of acting remains patented by Bollywood we cannot be judged on a par with the performing greats of international cinema.
Not that Hindi cinema hasn't had its share of silent glory. Nutan in Sujata and Bandini, Nargis not so much in Mother India as K.A. Abbas's Anhonee, Sharmila Tagore in Anupama, Shabana Azmi in Khandhar, Dharmendra in Satyakam, Amitabh Bachchan in Bemisal, Tabu in Maachis, Jaya Bhaduri in Sholay, Abhishek Bachchan in Sarkar…. These performances screamed through their slicing silences.
The most glorious moment of silence that I've encountered in Hindi cinema was in Mahesh Bhatt's Arth where Shabana Azmi sits quietly listening to Smita Patil's diatribe on the mistress' guilt. The camera was here focused entirely on the Other Woman. And yet, in that one sequence, Shabana proved how to hold audiences with the illimitable powers of silence.
Shabana told me about Kareena's glorious moment of silent effectuality in J.P.Dutta's LOC.
It's the sequence where Kareena has to react to her husband's dead body being brought in a coffin.
"That one shot said it all about Kareena. Iss ladki ne kamaal kar diya," the diva of histrionics said about her impulsive inheritor.
But how many people actually remember Kareena in that moment of anguished defeat in LOC…..or Tabu when she crumbles to the ground after her son shoots a man in Chandni Bar….Or Hema Malini's utterly makeup-free silences in Gulzar's Khushboo where she did the opposite of her loud grimace-inducing chatter-box act in Sholay. Or Hrithik Roshan trying to smother his love for Esha Deol in Arjun Sablok's Na Tum Jano Na Hum?
Funny, how the loud get the loudest applause. But the performance that makes a difference needn't be the best performance in any film.
I thought Ajay Devgan was far superior in his smoldering silences in Company and Omkara than his aggressive overtures in Gangaajal and Apaharan.
So cheer up Kareena. Konkona didn't steal the show. She jumps out of the screen whereas you coil up and withdraw into yourself. And thank God the awards committees recognized her silences.
Shakespeare would've fallen in love with this Desdemona.