Happy Birthday Salman Khan: When the megastar showed us he could actually perform
Happy Birthday Salman Khan: When the megastar showed us he could actually perform
Salman Khan’s performances in recent years have been nothing to write home about. To see him sleepwalk through his later works is a rude reminder of how effective this star can be when he sets his heart to it, as he did in Hum…Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999).
Not Sooraj Barjatya, but Sanjay Leela Bhansali brought out the best in Salman in Bhansali’s second feature film. The two worked together for the first time in Bhansali’s directorial debut Khamoshi The Musical where Salman put in a neat appealing performance as Manisha Koirala’s boyfriend.
In Hum…Dil De Chuke Sanam, Salman’s innate sense of mischief was soundly tapped. He was very clearly a success as a prankster guest in a disciplinarian musician’s household, Salman even gave flatulence a heroic legitimacy in this film. His real-life mom Helen played his mother. He loved it. So did his fans. In Hum..Dil De Chuke Sanam, Salman played the best version of himself.
In Satish Kaushik’s Tere Naam (2003) as Radhe the goon Salman made the pretty Bhumika Chawla swoon. Long-flowing tresses and all, Salman Khan was a delight, As the loverboy suffering psycho-trauma after a severe head injury he was a revelation. I’ve never seen Salman transform into a character so effectively in any other film before or since. Director Satish Kaushik was planning a sequel which never happened.
In the very aptly titled Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Salman actually slipped into a character named Pavan Chaturvedi. And he remained there. All through. Rarely have we seen Salman stay in character throughout the film. The last time he played a character and not ‘Salman Khan’ was in Kabir Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger. There he kept slipping in and out of character. Not this time, buddy! Not in Bajrangi Bhaijaan. What we see on screen is an avatar of the innocent God-fearing upright and honest ‘Prem’ from Sooraj Barjatya’s cinema, a Hanuman Bhakt whose self-righteousness would have been boring had it been played by any other star-actor. We could say Salman plays the Son of Prem in Bajrangi Bhaijaan. And let’s not waste any more time in saying this is one of Salman’s career’s most accomplished performances to date, heartfelt passionate and emotional, as he takes charge of a little girl’s travel plans back to her home in Pakistan.
It’s a pity that Salman and Kabir had a thundering fall-out after Tubelight. Yes, Tublight went wrong. But it was a brave failure. Why let failure dictate the choices in life?
Salman Khan’s superstardom is beyond the precincts of rationale or logic. After the heart-warming Bajrangi Bhaijaan act, Salman again pushed himself physically and emotionally to a new level of commitment in Sultan. Playing the goodhearted solidly dependable Haryanvi wrestler Salman brought a kind of feisty vulnerability along with a spiritual certainty to his instantly likeable character.
The physical and emotional transformation is so palpable and authentic as to remind us of what Robert de Niro achieved in and outside the boxing ring in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. Salman’s accent was pitch-perfect. And that’s where the performance began. Salman took himself dead seriously, for a change.
The final film that I thought did unexpected things with Salman’s superstardom was Mujhse Shaadi Karoge (2003): Here’s what producer Sajid Nadiadwala did with his buddy Salman and neighbour Akshay Kumar when they came together. He flipped their personalities. Salman played the god-fearing, honest-to-goodness saintly lover-boy. Akshay played the roguish devilish hard-drinking fraudulent suitor. They both wooed Priyanka Chopra with a do-or-die vigour. Eventually, Salman got the girl. Eventually, they both stopped doing films with Priyanka. But that’s another story.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.
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