He has been honoured with several awards, kudos, and other praises. For good reason. Personally, I do not consider Naseeruddin Shah to be an actor par excellence, at least going by all the media hype that surrounds him. I guess the media has some inexplicable fetish for theatre/stage actors who become successful in cinema. Look at who all the media chooses to glorify: (Secular) Shabana Azmi, (late) Smita Patil, Nana Patekar, Manoj Bajpai, Ashutosh Rana… Not that they’re not good actors, but each one of them stand out because of a specific mannerism, voice, facial contortions expression, and so on.

I am yet to see an actor today who comes across as…umm… wholesome (for want of a better term). In the sense that he/she is not distinguished by any of the aforementioned features. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m talking about the greatest actor of ‘em all: Sanjeev Kumar. Om Puri to an extent, comes close.

That said, Naseeruddin Shah is definitely an actor in his own right. He, like Om Puri entered the industry during the days of the much-touted “parallel cinema,” or “art films.” Now, I’ve never understood the hoopla that surrounds “art films,” apart from the fact that their hallmarks of distinction are terrible production values, an-almost inaudible sound, and contrived lighting. These films were touted as such because they “highlighted societal problems,” strove to break away from the “crass” commercial films… you get the picture. Having watched several of these lofty movies, I came away with this conclusion: while it is undeniable that the makers of these movies had a definite message to convey, their failure precisely lay in this aspect: these films didn’t convey the said message.

Other “art” films were but “crass” commercial films in disguise. Mirch Masala is a classic example. There’s nothing lofty about this story where a group of rural women throw chilli powder into Naseeruddin Shah’s face, and proceed to kill the tyrant. Surely, a commercial movie with better technical values would have been more entertaining. One other such movie that comes to mind is Ardh Satya. Back then, it was pretty controversial given the heavy statist government we had, which imposed every conceivable taboo. It showed the “inner” workings of the police force in a manner that wasn’t shown earlier. It in fact, spawned a whole slew of commercial films that centered around the theme of corrupt policemen. Watching Ardh Satya today is truly an exercise in boredom.

Ardh Satya, like other “art” films suffers from a malaise that seemed to have infected “art” filmmakers. There seems to be an ostensible effort on the part of the director/scriptwriter to “show” that these movies are a cut above the “mind numbing” commercial movies. Thus you have Om Puri and Smita Patil discussing literature, societal problems, and attending to “culture” classical dance performances.

The other overly-hyped film is “Arth,” which supposedly signalled in Hindi cinema, the arrival of the “liberated” woman. My pet bete noire, Mahesh Bhatt chose to paint Kulbhushan Karbanda as nothing more than an opportunistic wimp. Smita Patil is shown as a pretty psyched up lady and her fits of emotion come across as being comical rather than a display of histrionics.

It is not difficult to trace the genesis of art films. The mid-’70s was when it all began. I’m guessing here, but as I see it, art films grew out of a need to somehow make a cinematic equivalent of stage-drama. Back then, due to the overpowering influence of commercial films, it probably was felt by a section of “intellectuals” that the popularity of theatre was on the wane and that they had to adapt to the new, more popular medium. However, little did they realize that you cannot combine two entirely different entertainment forms. Plays are different in that you have a ready mould: the written play, which you can shape, hone and present it the way you feel is the most appropriate. Essentially, every performance of a written play is but an interpretation of the play’s director, and not the playwright’s own interpretation. This is the reason you have so many different drama troupes/companies staging the same play: the expression of the actors significantly varies in each such performance–this is what I meant by the word, “interpretation.”

Whereas cinema is different. It too, has a readymade mould: the scriptwriter’s script. Once it’s filmed, everything is over. It is very rare that the same film, which is made again, is as successful or as appealing as the original. Several examples come to mind: the original Hitchcockian thriller, Psycho, is still the best; the same holds good for The Exorcist. To generalize, drama has an enduring quality, which cinema lacks to a very great extent. Several plays have been made into movies, but only a few of them are worth mentioning: A Street Car Named Desire is a classic play-turned-movie. However, a similar attempt to make Karnad’s Agni Mattu Male (Fire and Rain) into a movie, bombed badly.

I don’t mean to demean art films. What I want to underscore is that the premise on which the “art” film “movement” was based on was not sound. In trying to balance too many themes, in trying to emphatically be different, art films did themselves in. Another drawback they suffered from was that they successfully alienated a large portion of cinegoers who for some reason concluded that they were boring, couldn’t be understood, and provided no entertainment. In the name of being “different” and “bold,” art films contained generous doses of sleaze–that’s what it is, finally, despite tall claims of “showing it is as it is.” The average cinegoer if at all he watched art films, did so to view a panting, moaning, half-clothed Smita Patil, or a Reema Lagoo (ever watched Rihaee, a pseudo feminist film?), or Neena Gupta.

And that is what I frown upon: creating an artificial distinction of “art” and “commercial” and assigning value labels where none exist. “Art” films did exist (cast in the “commercial” mould) during and pre-70s: Aandhi, Chetnaa, Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam, Pyasaa, Do Bigha Zameen, Mother India… all of these movies were “commercial” in every sense of the word, yet they involved accomplished actors, had real taut scripts, more importantly, appealed to all categories of the audience, and were blockbusters.

Perhaps, the only credit that can be attributed to “art” films is that they introduced to mainstream cinema, some excellent actors: Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Amrish Puri, Smita Patil, Kulbhushan Karbanda, et al.