Six films old
Abhay of the Deol family hasn't been in the movie business long, but has already made an indelible mark.
Serious movie buffs — the ones who can look beyond box-office collections — know exactly what to expect from his films: a strong script, a director willing to explore new terrain, and an understated but very effective lead performance. The rise of his career graph has been equally understated — his movies haven’t been smash hits so far but they have dedicated cult followings.
During a telephonic interview with Deol, I mention that this trajectory is especially notable in light of his family background. As a boy growing up in the 1980s (he was born in 1976), he would have watched the mainstream pulp that his paternal uncle Dharmendra and his much-older cousin Sunny Deol were doing at the time. A certain amount of hero-worshipping must have taken place at that age. (“Yes, of course,” Deol says.) So how did he get from there to where he is today, a standard-bearer for small, script-driven movies?
I’m half-expecting Deol to underplay the family connection. Not a bit of it. “But that’s just the point,” he says, “I had wider exposure precisely because I was from a filmi family.” He speaks fluently and warmly, and somewhat faster than I had expected, rarely pausing for breath. “My taayaji and brothers travelled the world during their shoots, and through them I got to know about other cinemas, the possibilities of other types of movies. Most Indian youngsters didn’t have that exposure before satellite TV came in, but I was lucky.”
Of course, this in itself doesn’t explain Deol’s choice of roles; most other star-children his age are doing big-banner movies with assembly-line screenplays. But he developed a varied taste at an early age, he explains — he was watching regular kiddie fare like Star Wars alongside more challenging films such as Brazil and Blade Runner. “I was too young to understand all the nuances,” he says (while I shake my head to dispel visions of Dharmendra bringing home Terry Gilliam video-cassettes for his little nephew), “but I loved the look of these movies, and they motivated me to explore further.” He admits to a fondness for Iranian cinema. “Given the limitations on what they can show, it’s amazing how much they’ve achieved. It’s a conservative culture, like ours, but they put subtle emotion ahead of gloss.”
Subtlety is the hallmark of Deol’s own performances. As the engineer Satyaveer in Navdeep Singh’s excellent “Rajasthani noir” Manorama Six Feet Under, he was the epitome of the small-town Everyman, vaguely aspiring to better things but not driven enough to do much about it. Occupying a very different world from this character is the go-getting thief Lucky Singh in Dibakar Banerjee’s Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, but Deol brings a fine shade to even this flamboyant role. Lucky is a charismatic rogue, but we can see the effort that goes into his facade of self-assurance. He’s a fully realised character.
“Well, I liked films where I could relate to the people — where I found them tangible and real,” Deol says, “As you know, most of the Hindi movies we grew up with were full of larger-than-life characters. I would be entertained by them, but I didn’t feel a connect.””Asked for examples of actors who have inspired him, he mentions Charlize Theron in Monster. “Now there’s a performance that could make you empathise with a serial killer, a woman who’s monstrous on the surface. She puts the viewer in the character’s shoes, showing us how cruel and isolating society can be — how it can push you into a corner. I’d love to do work like that, which opens your mind to other lives.”
Deol has enjoyed playing the title role in Dev D, an updating of the Devdas story, made by that most individualistic of filmmakers, Anurag Kashyap. Having only worked with relatively inexperienced directors so far, was it intimidating to be helmed by a man who is among Bollywood’s few genuine auteurs? “No, Anurag has been a friend for a long time, so there was nothing to be scared about,” he replies, “Besides, in my view, an actor is a tool in any director’s hands. For that matter, a director himself is a tool — I think of a film as one big jigsaw puzzle, which everyone contributes to.”
And he’s excited about the adrenaline, the originality of treatment, that Kashyap has brought to a familiar tale. “Our setting is modern, urban and gritty,” he says, “but deep down this is very much the Devdas story as it was written nearly a hundred years ago. When I read the book, I was fascinated by all the angst towards social norms, which has been poured out through this one character. We haven’t tampered with that spirit.”
“I tried to dig deep into Dev’s psyche, and I hope I’ve succeeded.”
A couple of decades ago, Naseeruddin Shah — the thinking man’s actor for another generation — decided to shrug off the “Serious” tag and have a grand old time in films like Karma and Tridev. Does Deol see himself doing something similar down the line? “But my intention even now is to make films that are commercial,” he insists. “I don’t care for watertight divisions — it’s not like I’m trying to select movies that won’t do well.” Strong scripts are what attract him, and in the final analysis the only distinction to be made is “between a good film and a bad film”. Going by his record so far, it’s likely that he’ll maintain that distinction.