The Godmother
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Shabana Azmi. Click for bigger pic!
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A little glamour, no gloss, on the bleaker side of 40, abrasively feminist... Why are people still interested in Shabana Azmi? Just because she's among the finest actresses India has ever produced? Or is it because she's shown more fire, more spunk than any of her contemporaries?
Haresh Pandya caught up with Shabana on the sets of Godmother in Morbi, Gujarat.
After more than 25 years in the industry, how do you look back on your career?
I look back on my career with some sort of satisfaction. It has had its highs and it has had its lows. All in all, I think I've been fortunate to be at the right place in the right time. When I entered the industry in the early 1970s, I was a gold medalist from the film institute, Pune. That was when graduates from the film institute were very quickly absorbed by the mainstream commercial industry...
Literally on the very next day after I passed out, I was busy shooting for a film made by Gujarati director Kantilal Rathod. I would still like to believe that my best is not behind me because that would be very sad. I mean, if I start believing that I was already past my best, it would create a certain sense of despair in me. I hope the future continues to provide me with opportunities.
What are you actually looking forward to?
It's only recently that there has been a change in the Hindi cinema so that a woman of 40 is still given a role as a protagonist in a film. It is a completely new phenomenon. Even 10 years ago, a woman of 40 was considered good enough only to be somebody's mother, bhabhi or wife. And it stopped there.
Because of the women's movement in the world, with women insisting on being part of the global dialogue, whether in art or in politics or in development, I think the scenario has changed in Hindi cinema too.
I think it is the result of the fact that somewhere women are suddenly now being given centrestage in that global dialogue. A lot of new subjects are available for a woman of my age. And I would like to do roles which express the feminine case, as I call it.
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Shabana Azmi in Mrityudand. Click for bigger pic!
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I think men and women are different -- I am not saying better or worse, just different. And the different ways of thinking could be reflected in anything -- in movies and in the characters we do. So I hope many more chances will come my way, of doing more complex characterisation, not just simply in terms of good or bad, but trying and finding the layers and the complexities of challenging characters.
If you look at Hindi cinema, although there has been a change in the mainstream cinema in recent times, it is really a cosmetic one. When you see films like Insaaf Ki Devi or Shernior Aurat, the protagonists are exactly like the males except that they are in disguise. First we had Rambos and now we have Rambolines.
What I'm talking about is exploring the whole complexity of what it means to be a woman in our society. Somehow it skips the mainstream commercial cinema. But I hope that now spaces will be made to allow reflection on that complex characterisation.
What do you have to say about the time when art films thrived?
It did last for a very long time, right from the early 1970s to the late 1980s, almost 20 years. And they were very strong when they lasted.
They faced many constraints, not least of which were financial ones -- art films got very limited finances, the little they did largely came from the National Film Development Corporation. They couldn't compete with commercial cinema. The main failure has been that of the exhibition and distribution sectors. Because if a government is serious about promoting good cinema, it should forget about producing films. Enough private producers would be willing to produce films on a lower budget if they are guaranteed a release in the theatres. So we need theatres with smaller sitting capacities, controlled rentals, so that they don't have to directly compete with, let's call them mainstream films.
In the area of distribution and exhibition we haven't been terribly successful. The advent of video
also harmed parallel cinema films because people watch all these films at home but don't go into the theatres that are a bad condition.
Video tapes can be rented for just about Rs 10 and the whole family can see it at the same time. They couldn't control video piracy too. These were external reasons for art films suffering. Plus, I think somewhere film-makers started repeating their subjects. They were making films only about rural exploitation and poverty and things like that.
Now there is a whole new generation of young film-makers with more contemporary ideas and set in urban areas and not necessarily wanting to make films only in Indian languages but also in English -- people like Shekhar Kapur, Sudhir Mishra and others. They are extremely bright stars of Indian cinema. And they are now looking for international finance, whether it is from French, English or American television, NRIs, whatever. Because of this the subjects they choose will also be more contemporary, more urban, more in tune with the international scenario. I think this is a positive step.
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Click for bigger pic!
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I also think organisations like Plus Channel, HMV -- which is producing this film Godmother -- ABCL, all of them are also now making films with bigger budgets. So I am hopeful that the future will be better.
You have acted in many art films. Do you regret it sometimes?
I am extremely proud of the fact that I have acted in art films. Everything that I am today and all the respect I get as an actress have come specially because of the work I did in art cinema. The degrees, the variety of roles that I got, all were possible due to art cinema. Commercial cinema is equally important because whatever weightage I got as a star, in inverted commas, came from my working in commercial films. So both zones have been important for me. But decidedly my status as an actress was determined by my roles in art cinema.
Could you single out any particular role which you feel cannot be bettered?
There is never any performance of mine with which I am totally satisfied. I am very critical of my own work. When I see it in retrospect, I only see all the mistakes. But the film that I have made least mistakes in, I think, is Fire directed by Deepa Mehta for which I won the best actress awards at the Chicago and Los Angeles International Film Festivals. There was another film in the early 1980s, Mahesh Bhatt's Arth. I was happy with my performance in that and in a film called Khandhar by Mrinal Sen.
How was it like working with and against someone like Smita Patil?
No actor is good enough on his own. Nor any actress for that matter. Unless my co-stars are good, unless the script is good, unless the director is good, no amount of talent on an actress's part can salvage a film. A film is an extremely collaborative medium. All the departments have to work well for it to be successful.
In the films I worked with Smita Patil, her presence, her talent helped improve my performance. I think good actresses can help each other. There is no other function that they can perform because when you are looking into your co-star's eyes and if your co-star is telling the truth, you have to merely react. Because acting is finally about reacting.
What is your idea of a perfect actress? Does such a creature exist?
I think perfection in acting is a very difficult term to describe. What are you calling perfect? By what benchmark do you reach the definition of perfection? It is not like a horse race in which you say the horse that runs the fastest is the best. Somebody who plays a perfect Hamlet might be a disastrousMacbeth.
So is he a good actor or a bad actor? Is versatility important or excellence in any one particular kind of character? It is a difficult question to answer. But I think versatility is an important ingredient when judging whether the person is on the whole an excellent performer or not. For it is difficult to be versatile, to be able to do emotional scenes, light scenes, everything together to the same degree of intensity -- it is a very particular art.
The Shabana Azmi interview, continues
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