SRIDEVI ANALYSIS
Ace Futura
Sridevi's Quest for Happiness
by Subhash K. Jha
PHOTOGRAPH: RAKES SHRESTHA
"Ab dekho kya karti hai," the Sridevi fan whispered at a critical point of storytelling in Army. It is the sequence where the inert body of the heroine's husband is brought to her during karva chauth. Audiences sense the imminent eruption of Mount Sridevi's volcanic talent as she stares disbelievingly and disapprovingly at her prankish husband. At first she thinks her man is up to his usual childish tricks. "Don't do this to me today. I have been fasting since morning," she whispers with discomfort and embarrassment as onlookers stare mutely. Then, as realisation hits the woman like a gale of pain lashed wind, she wails and screams in an agony that melts the frames of Sridevi's made-to-order comeback vehicle.
Flashback to Mahesh Bhatt's Gumrah in 1993 and the death sequence of Sridevi's screen mother Reema Lagoo. As the innocent and sheltered girl of a broken home realises that her beloved mother will never, repeat, never return to her, Sridevi's scream freezes in her throat. The expression as she backs off towards the wall of the hospital room is that of a fear, anger, disbelief, an unbearable agony suspended in time...
Sridevi can express these emotions and many many more. Directors have designated her a veritable expressions ki dukaan, a walking talking encyclopaedia of screen dramatics, who can conjure up ten to fifteen different expressions for any given scene. All the director has to do is to take his pick of the parody or the pique, whichever extreme of emotion is required.
Way back in 1984-85 when Shekhar Kapur was struggling to complete the ill-fated Joshilay he had commented on Sridevi's exceptional dexterity at communicating the character's innermost feelings through her large eloquent eyes. Even today viewers cannot take their eyes off Sridevi's face.
Even as thousands of feelings flit across her face like multi-coloured fish in an aquarium, in 1987, Kapur's Mr. India proved to be the first major turning point in Sridevi's long and stunning career. After Mr. India everyone raved about her comic timing in the long and heavily improvisational Charlie Chaplin sequence (one of the obvious personal favourites among her performances). With Mr. India and its dazzling and sensuous "Kaate nahin kat yeh yeh din yeh raat" musical statement on sexuality in a clinging wet blue chiffon sari (that has been imitated in at least fifty subsequent Hindi blockbusters),
Sridevi had really and truly arrived.
Though outwardly Sridevi's ascent to the acme of accolades seemed a cakewalk, the climb has been anything but easy. Since her mesmerizing performance as the child-woman who loses her memory and is pampered by a stranger, Kamal Haasan, Sridevi has had very few opportunities in Hindi cinema to put into operation the arching artillery of expressions at her disposal.
One can count the directors who have made telling use of her vast potential on one's fingers. When Balu Mahendra remade his Tamil classic Moondram Pirai as Sadma, he opted for the actress from the Tamil original in the remake only when Dimple Kapadia was unable to do the role. Looking back, it is impossible to imagine Dimple or any other leading actress in the role of the endearing child-woman in Sadma.
No matter how sublime or ridiculous the part, Sridevi always seems to exercise a birthright over the character. Unfortunately, not too many directors of Hindi cinema have been able to realize or showcase Sridevi's full potential. Those directors who have made sparing use of her phenomenal talents include K. Vishwanath (Jaag Utha Insan), Shekhar Kapur (Mr. India), Yash Chopra (Chandni, Lamhe), Pankaj Parashar (Chaalbaaz) and Mahesh Bhatt (Gumrah).
Other directors of Hindi cinema have left Sridevi to her own devices. Knowing that she is a veritable scholar of cinematic linguistics a majority of directors have allowed Sridevi to become many sizes larger than the films designed to contain her talents. This was true of Harmesh Malhotra's Nagina ten years ago. It still stands true in Raam Shetty's Army. Partly, Sridevi must shoulder the blame for her still untapped reservoir of histrionics. Always inflexible about her fee, Sridevi has outpriced herself from the range of directors of the off-stream/mainstream cinema like Govind Nihalani, Ketan Mehta and Prakash Jha who can work wonders with her vital and limitless talents.
Rather than explore obfuscated aspects of her talent Sridevi has elected to play the artful game in sets that she is comfortable with no matter how mediocre they may be. Any actress of substance knows that one's rapport with a producer has no direct bearing on the equality of output. After the surprising success of the abominable Nagina - 1986 (the rule came Sridevi's way only after Jaya Prada refused to work with snakes), Sridevi opted on for four other films with the over the hill director Harmesh Malhotra who couldn't believe his luck when the Sridevi favoured him with her royal presence in Sherni (the dacoit drama about which including man Shatrughan Sinha had quipped that "Sri is the sherni, me the bakra), Nigahen, Banjaran and Heer Ranjha. In spite of a devastatingly poignant and moving performance in the last-mentioned [Sridevi] vs Priya Roy [which was] slated to play Heer off for Mehboob's
Kudos to the titanic talents of Sridevi were colossal disasters.
In the present, one finds Sridevi afraid to accept histrionic challenges that would push her towards the peaks that she has brushed against in Jaag Utha Insaan and Sadma. Recently she opted out of Feroz Ghosh's Yuggpurush with the excuse that she wasn't comfortable with the idea of playing a prostitute. The remark smacks of histrionic...
...After so many years before the arclights, Sridevi is identified more by the Saroj Khan choreographed song-and-dance sequences like, 'Hawa hawaii' in Mr. India and 'Mere haathon mein nau nau chudiyan' in Chandni than by devastating performances in dramatic sequences in the two films. Witness the sequence in Mr. India where the repentant reporter extends boxes full of chocolates and pastries to her young orphan friends. Or the sequence in Chandni where Rishi Kapoor orders her out of his life. The combination of wounded vulnerability and impeccable dignity in the above two sequences placed Sridevi among the most accomplished actresses of the land.
Sridevi's tryst with stardom obtained its first nudge when she was barely five years old. Little Sridevi was Lord Murugan in the Tamil religious melodrama Kandan Karunai. Two years later she was seen in the MGR-Jayalalitha political melodrama Naam Nadu (later remade in Hindi as Apna Desh). The transition from frock to sari was effortlessly achieved. Sridevi became a major star with Bharathi Raja's Pathinaru Vayathinile. The Tamil film was remade into Hindi by the same director as Solva Saawan, the film that launched Sridevi as a leading lady in Hindi films.
Unfortunately, leading man Amol Palekar's lavish praise about the pug nosed South Indian scene-stealer was ignored by the Mumbai film industry. After Solva Saawan Sridevi had to return to doing Tamil and Telugu films such as Priya, Ganga Yamuna Kaveri, Sigappu Rojakal (the original version of Red Rose), Vetagadu (the political thriller in which Sridevi was teamed with the formidable Andhra star-politician N.T. Rama Rao), and believe it or not...
....such was her profligacy in the seventies that Sridevi played the lead in nineteen South Indian films in 1978 alone! The question that arises in the minds of all Sri-watchers is, how did the actress manage to preserve her freshness of appearance and her ferociously spontaneous acting skills even after doing scores of South Indian films?
For her relaunch in Hindi films in K. Raghavendra Rao's Himmatwala in 1983, Sridevi...
...insulation, a creative naivete that belies the monstrously myriad panache that she imparts to the silliest of roles.
Yes, there are the performances from Bharathi Raja's Solva Saawan in 1979 (in which Sridevi waded into oblivion after hitching up her ghagra way above the thighs for a scandalous sequence) to Army in 1996. But where are the films of merit? Films which would push Sridevi into the National Awards category? Four years ago Dimple Kapadia realised she was getting nowhere in the mainstream cinema with her unplumbed talents. Dimple wooed and won assignments from Kalpana Lajmi, Mrinal Sen and Gulzar.
Sridevi's fans go to see her and not her films. While even a Mamta Kulkarni has expressed the desire to work in meaningful films Sridevi remains happy with her pay-me-my-price-and-I-will-be-nice attitude to her work. Even after twenty-nine years of acting she continues to favour the......was whiplash alert.
The sickening spate of Raghavendra Rao-K. Bappiah Jeetendra-Bappi Lahiri films that followed in Hindi would have branded a lesser actress as an overweight glamour-puss forever.
Not Sridevi. She was clearly made of sterner stuff. Even when she was required to perform the most obnoxious dances and theatrics, Sridevi always emerged victorious over the mediocre scripts and directions of her pot-boilers in the eighties. In Tohfa and Maqsad when she was pitched against the chiselled Jaya Prada (who was then being touted in the press as Sri's strongest rival) Sridevi was like a panther before the camera. She danced with her arch-rival like a woman possessed in the climax of Maqsad, bruising her knees and Jaya Prada's chances of becoming No. 1.
She effortlessly survived the demeaning designation of 'Thunder Thighs' to incite thundering sighs in Yash Chopra's Chandni. Clingy chiffons wrapped around a pencil-slim figure, she was the sophisticated dream woman of every man in the audience. Between Himmatwala and Chandni, Sridevi's climb to the crest of stardom in Hindi films was boosted by Harmesh Malhotra's Nagina and Shekhar Kapur's Mr. India.
After stunning star turns in Chandni, Lamhe, Chaalbaaz, Khuda Gawah and Gumrah Sridevi seemed to have exhausted all possibilities that were open to her in the commercial Hindi cinema. Critics began to pan her patent mannerisms. Her costar of many films, Anil Kapoor advised her to stop making 'those faces' before the camera. With Laadla in 1994 Sridevi stymied all criticism by reinventing herself as the smouldering brooding femme-fatale. Gone were the giggles and jiggles of Chandni. In Laadla and now Army, Sridevi's spellbinding face seldom breaks into a smile. In both the films she conveys a smouldering intensity that burns up the frames and belies the mediocrity of the ventures.
Sridevi loves to create the impression that she knows little about the craft of acting. Critics have for long upheld the opinion that Marilyn Monroe, Geeta Bali and Mumbai's latest and most enduring avatar comes alive before the camera by magic. In truth, there is an alert and ever-vigilant mind ticking behind all those seemingly effortless and spontaneous performances of Sridevi.
More often than not, scriptwriters and directors of Hindi cinema have failed to provide Sridevi with an emotional graph for characters she has enacted. In the absence of a supportive creative-system in Army Sridevi has invented her own graph for the character of the widow who seeks revenge on the man who murdered her husband. In the sequences before the flashbacks her effulgent face reflects the timeless sorrow of femininity crushed under the wheels of heedless fortune. When she sings and dances with her baby, Sridevi not only represents the life force, she becomes the life force.
Watching her go through the paces of the routine revenge drama in Army with such breathtaking grace, one wonders what Sridevi would have done to the role of the fallen woman gathering the broken pieces of her life in Raj Kapoor's Prem Granth. So far only Sridevi's comic......and sensuous aptitudes have been explored in Hindi cinema. The dramatic intensity, so vividly outlined in specific sequences of Chandni, Lamhe, Khuda Gawah and Army are yet to find fulsome expression.
Rumours of Sridevi's impending retirement abound. It is said that she has resolved to exit from the film industry while basking in the glory of a hit rather than cringing in the ignominy of a flop. Now that Sridevi has achieved that goal with Army (and her forthcoming films Mr. Bechara and Judaai both with Anil Kapoor are expected to consolidate the success) Sridevi can afford to think of marriage and domesticity. If the devastating dynamo truly intends to retire from the rat-race, then she couldn't have chosen a worse time to do so. At thirty-five, Sridevi is in the prime of her talent and beauty. She has never looked better.
It is time for the fifth major phase in Sridevi's career to begin. Sridevi's first stint as a child actor stretched up to the Hindi Julie in 1975. The second phase as a leading lady in Tamil-Telugu films lasted till the mid-'80s. In 1983 Sridevi was launched into the third phase of her career as a successful leading lady of Hindi films in Himmatwala. Chandni in 1989 opened doors to a new poised Sridevi, she had now graduated from the scent of sandalwood to the fragrance of Chanel. Now with Laadla and Army it is time for the actress to seek out the services of directors who can extract the dramatic intensity of her persona....
G | SEPTEMBER 1996 | 49
G | SEPTEMBER 1996 | 48
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