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FILM COMMENT
September/October 2002
PERFECT PITCH
MAITHILI RAO PAYS TRIBUTE TO BRILLIANT INDIAN ACTRESS AND FEMINIST ICON
SHABANA AZMI
by Maithili Rao
above: Fire
Longevity is an underrated virtue in actors. Their careers owe their substance and significance not merely to decade-spanning consistency but to how they refine their craft and redefine the collaborative art of film. Shabana Azmi has carved out so distinctive a niche in Indian cinema that you canāt really think of anybody else playing her roles.
Passion and commitment ÷ not only to professional excellence but to progressive, liberal ideals ÷ are rare commodities in Indian cinema. Azmi is Indiaās Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave rolled into one charismatic icon. She uses her stature and enviable powers of articulation to fight for causes she believes in ÷ the rights of women, minorities, displaced slum dwellers, AIDS patients ÷ and sheās relentless in her long-standing struggle against fundamentalists of all hues. Although she chooses films and filmmakers with a liberal bias, Azmi has also had the good sense to see that this commitment doesnāt result in blatant propaganda. Considering that in the male-dominated Indian film industry, all a young actress needs is bland prettiness, a sexy screen presence, and a willingness to age into doting mother and fond sister-in-law roles, this thoroughbred long-distance runnerās record is all the more remarkable.
Almost from the beginning, Shabana Azmi gracefully straddled art and mainstream cinema without obvious compromises. Perhaps this can be attributed to her lineage. Azmi was born in 1950 and raised in Bombay. Her father, Kaifi Azmi, is an eminent Urdu poet who has also written lyrics for scores of Bombay films, her brother is a top-notch cinematographer, and her husband is screenwriter/lyricist Javed Akhar, who wrote some of Indian cinemaās greatest blockbusters as part of the Salim-Javed writing duo. Azmi often laughs at her brief tryst with glamour, but this self-mockery is deceptive. Though part of the celebrated quartet of ćNew Cinemaä icons (along with Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, and Om Puri) she capitalized on her stature to create and seize opportunities in mainstream films that dared to do something a little different. In some of her most popular films, like Swami (77) and Apne Paraye (80), both based on Saratchandra Chatterjee novels, she plays ćthe strong, traditional womanä who overcomes her vulnerabilities with grace.
Azmi has a physiognomy that allows her to readily assume different ethnicities ÷ an important attribute for an ambitious actor who wants to move beyond Hindi cinema. She can be the educated woman whose conscience is roused by her journalist husbandās questionable ethics, as in Kamla(85), based on Vijay Tendulkarās torn-from-the-headlines play; a low-caste Bihari peasant crushed by an uncaring social system in Paar (The Crossing, 84); a sulky, neglected wife of the Muslim aristocracy in 19th-century Raj India in both Junoon (Obsession, 78) and Satyajit Rayās Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 77); the contemporary Muslim woman of Lucknow in Anjuman (86), who shakes off the constraints of shabby-genteel poverty to galvanize embroidery workers into demanding their rights; an introverted daughter of the Bengali bourgeoisie bedeviled by existential angst in Khandhar (Ruins, 83) and Ek Din Achanak (Suddenly One Day, 89); and, in In Custody (93), the conniving second wife of a renowned Urdu poet who passes off her neglected husbandās work as her own while preening amidst sycophants at soirees (Azmiās love of Urdu poetry lent Ismail Merchantās film an ironic subtext).
Call it karmic coincidence: Azmiās debut coincided with the birth of Indiaās Parallel Cinema ÷ independent non-mainstream films that began to appear in the mid- Seventies. In broad terms, Parallel Cinema (also known as New Cinema) adopted a naturalistic mode to tell grassroots stories propelled by strong social purpose. Auteurs like Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, and Aparna Sen and directors like Deepa Mehta, Prakash Jha, Goutam Ghosh, and Vinay Shukla had one thing in common: they favored well-defined women as protagonists ÷ and sometimes as the central metaphors of their narratives. A paragon of Parallel Cinema, Azmi handled this double duty with unshowy brilliance.
A protean screen presence, a perfectly modulated voice with an expressive range and impeccable diction, an acute eye for the telling detail, and an osmotic ability to internalize the spirit of each film sheās in: all this makes for a formidable actorās arsenal. To cap everything, Azmi is willing not only to risk her image but to take on the holy cows of both Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy. For all these reasons itās easy to see why power + charisma + crusading zeal + leadership = Shabana Azmi. If she stood for election tomorrow (Azmi is presently a nominated member of Parliament*), sheād sweep the liberal vote.
Azmiās journey from Ankur (The Seedling, 73) to Godmother (99) has been fruitful, replete with memorable characters in landmark films, but her technique doesnāt advertise itself. Take Ankur ÷ her debut film, as well as that of director Shyam Benegal. With a nice mix of sexual languor and peasant cunning, Azmi plays a village maidservant who willingly enters into a liaison with the young landlord even though she is genuinely attached to her deaf-mute husband. The actress doesnāt just nail the pregnant womanās waddle, she lets us glimpse the conflicting feelings raging within her: anger at the cowardly landlordās injustice and protective affection for her husbandās simple goodness.
