Amitabh Bachchan: After 2000
iView Author: Ashwin Singh (Mumbai, India)
Email: akas100 [at] gmail [dot] com
Amitabh Bachchan: After 2000
Amitabh Bachchan (AB) was admitted to Lilavati Hospital on his birthday due to complaints of abdominal pain. I sincerely hope that he recovers soon and gets back to what he does best i.e. acting.
I thought of writing about his work after 2000. Many would say that it has been far less illustrious than compared to the work he did in his hey days. This may be true as many of the films he has done have not been up to the mark. But in terms of his own performances, I think he has done reasonably well, infact in some cases, exceptionally well. Here’s a list of AB’s work post 2000 that I simply loved.
(The list is sorted according to the release dates)
KBC as AB himself.
KBC was the best thing that happened to AB after Deewar. Not only did it resurrect his career but also presented his persona to millions of viewers like never before. AB was at his charming best and the streets would be empty at 9pm. ‘Lock kiya jaaye’, ‘Sahi jawab’ and other such phrases used by him became a part of daily conversation. People were brushing their GK knowledge including yours truly and it was such a high to answer correctly before the contestants did.
AKS as Manu Varma
The first thing that comes to my mind about Aks is the first trailer. AB sitting on a throne with a mysterious smile on his face and his hand gesture coupled with the excellent background music. One of the best trailers I have ever seen. The movie sadly fell short of greatness but I think it’s quite an underrated movie. AB’s performance in the movie was outstanding. You get to see a very very different AB in the movie. Watch him emote in the ‘Banda yeh bindaas hai’ song or in the scene where he imitates Nandita Das after she refuses his passes. It’s a treat.
KAANTE as Major
The first time I saw this movie I loved it. I became an instant Sanjay Gupta fan. Of course I wasn’t aware of his DVD roots then. AB in a never seen avatar, playing a stylish Bank robber and kicking some ass atleast verbally was an instant hit for me. Well, even Quentin Tarantino loved his performance (courtesy: Srinivas@PFC)
BAGHBAN as Raj Malhotra
The movie went over the top at times but still is immensely watchable. The best thing about the movie is the chemistry between the lead pair. Hema Malini looked absolutely gorgeous. AB gave an earnest and sincere performance. Also, he sang a wonderful song for the film ‘Main yahan tu wahan’
KHAKEE as DCP Anant Kumar Srivastav
Arguably his best performance after 2000. This one has him playing a character in the same mould as his angry young man roles. The movie packs a punch and so does AB. Some of his dialogues were resonant of his 70’s films. The scene where he gets an asthma attack, his outburst against the system in front of a cop, his final encounter with Ajay Devgan are all high points of the film. Overall, a very accomplished performance indeed.
BUNTY AUR BABLI as DCP Dashrath Singh
The movie I feel had great potential but it didn’t make the cut. However it had two things that I simply loved, Kajrare and AB as Dashrath Singh. As a rustic cop from UP, AB got everything right from the look to the dialect and ofcourse the performance. Only complaint is that he should have had more screen time.
SARKAR / SARKAR RAJ as Subhash Nagre
Though his performance as Subhash Nagre is not my personal favourite, but he excels immensely in some of the sequences especially the Rashid entry in part1, the scene where he mourns Vishnu’s death in part2 etc. I personally feel his role was better in Sarkar Raj than in Sarkar though the latter is a superior movie according to me.
VIRUDDH as Vidhyadhar Patwardhan
A very highly underrated movie and a very highly underrated performance by AB. Sharmila Tagore and AB made a great couple and gave great performances. AB’s expression while watching John die in the ICU through the door moves you to tears. Ditto for the scene where he forcibly tries to laugh (post John’s death) like he used to before. He conveys the pain of losing one’s son and the fight within to move on with his life very well in that scene.
NISHABD as Vijay
I have seen bits and pieces of this movie and I have liked what I have seen especially AB’s performance. The last scene where he decides against committing suicide wanting every day to live a day more thinking of Jiah, has been enacted very well by him. I cannot forget to mention ‘Rozana’. This song has become a part of my life. AB and Vishal Bhardwaj have created magic together in the form of this song. I simply cannot thank them enough for it. I sincerely wish and hope that the duo create magic on screen as well.
THE LAST LEAR as Harry
It was by fortune that I saw this movie and fortune it was coz not only I got to see a wonderful movie which otherwise I might have missed but also I won a Last Lear t-shirt (yeah!!). Pratim D. Gupta describes this movie very aptly in his post ‘Lear stirs, he lives’ and also AB’s performance as ‘I had started believing Bachchan and Harry had merged into a single soul. I mean it, I couldn’t differentiate’. I second every word of that.
AB is my most favourite actor and I am eagerly waiting for his upcoming films.
Happy belated Birthday Amitji..
And Get Well soon……
P.S: Some would notice the glorious omission of BLACK. Truth is I don’t remember BLACK. I don’t remember much about it as I have seen it only once that too on the day it released with 30 fellow college mates who had anything but watching BLACK on their minds. And I don’t feel like watching it again.
Tags: Amitabh Bachchan
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Wonderful list. I’m glad you omitted Black since I dislike that movie and the performances.
very good narration of Big B’s performances… the only omission as you himself said is black bcoz what i think in black AB has given his best performance after the great deewar…
@akash and lee
thanks a lot. As expected Black always invokes extreme reactions….
Khakee is perhaps the most underrated movie in the last decade and also of Rajkumar Santoshi.Whenever people talk about Rajkumar Santoshi they refer to Ghayal,Ghatak and Damini but fact is that Khakee is perhaps his best after Ghayal.And of course Amitabh was superb in the film.Hey,you did not mention Cheeni Kum.Even though the second half was bad Amitabh was still very good in the film.
Ashwin, i liked the way u wrote about NISHABD.
To potray the character, AB needed to have a great understanding of Human Emotions and he is a master (can i call him GOD) at that.
There is a scene in NISHABD in which after jiah and revathi leave, he is shown sitting all alone in the DARK ROOM, surrounded by jiah’s photographs. RGV wanted him to potray a emotion in which, he is all alone but the same time surrounded by her thoughts and as he is trying hard to come over her and find solace in his other passion “photography”. But he can;t do that because every snap he takes, or even the camera he holds, reminds him of Jiah.
To potray such a huge range of emotions, without uttering a word, speaks volumes about his CALLIBRE.
@ anindya- Khakhee was a very poor film , as compare by AB’s standards, even by Santoshi’s standards.
There’s also Namak haraam (or is it halaal?). Where AB plays a comic character with immense finesse.
Actually, the great thing about actors like srk and AB is that they don’t let poor directors affect their performances.
Khakee, had a really gripping first half, but totally lost its way in the second half.
@ Sameer: That was Namak Halaal. Namak Haraam was a more serious movie, in fact AB’s character had slightly negative overtones in that.
Also liked his performance in Dev, though the movie was not that great as expected.
And even Ek Ajnabi, where it was a real kick ass performance.
In fact i think Aankhen, where he plays a blind bank manager, who masterminds a bank robbery, was one of his more underrated performances and the movie was better than Kaante.
Mohabbatein anyone? His and SRK’s interactions were the saving grace in an awful film.
KANK – Again, the saving grace in a film that otherwise stank.
If one thinks about it, Yashraj and Dharma have cast AB in some really dreadful films (Veer Zaara, JBJ). It is as if they know that they have a stinker in hand and hire AB to lend some respectability!!
I think the three best performances after 2000 would be….
1. Sarkar Raj
2. Last Lear
3. Khakee
Wait…just a sec…Sarkar Raj because it was a sequel and to potray the same character again with equal panache(I guess more with AB) by the same actor is more difficult.
The best scene would be when AB mourns in front on Abhi’s pic….noone can ever do that!! Please watch it to comment on it….
@Ratnakar,
Amitabh is not blind in Aankhen, rather he gathers three blind people who would operate his bank robbery plan with the help of Sushmita Sen.
As I can remember Amitabh Bachchan has not played a blind character till now.
(Zamanat has not been released where supposedly he has played a blind lawyer – I have no clue if its feasible and funtionable in real world, but we have to wait till film is released to know the story)
@Ashwin,
as a leading character actor he is doing more films and in last 8 years only he has worked in around 50 films and that makes an average of 6 films a year or 1 film every 60 days. and he is able to maintain his own standard in all these films and if script is good and scope has been given to his character and director is able and willing to get a good performance from him then he has surpassed that set standard also, even if not in whole of the film than in few scenes.
Lion has not become old as far as his acting ability is concerned.
Just one scene in The Last Lear where he is showing Preity Zinta, how to shout loudly to break the emotional inertia bridge he shows his range.
He shouts, shouts again, his whole body is stretched and he goes little ahead and when scene is under mesmerisation effect of his efforts, within the 2-3 eye blinks he steps back and speaks in normal low vopice and with normal expressions on the face. Thats range and command of a good actor. Even if two scenes are mixed, to maintain this continuity is not everybody’s cup of tea.
and Through Paheli he proves he can do worthy things in 5 minutes also.
He was the best in Darna Zaroori hai and he single handedly creates that impact which is necessary in such films.
Eklavya, Veer Zara, Cheeni Kum, Bhootnath, he is quite good there.
He has no scope in films like ab tumhare hawale watan sathiyon, Lakshya etc and any actor would have worked there because script gives no room for his character to flourish. Its just presence of big name of Amitabh Bachchan and he maintains his set standard in all these films. High calibre actors need challenging roles.
I loved ‘Rozana’ and enjoyed Nishabd. I remember the climax scene where AB tells his bro-in-law, “Main Jiah Ki Yaadon Me Kuchh Din Aur Zinda Rehna Chahta Hun.” Watching those pain stricken eyes accepting what love has done to them was just too good.
I liked Khakee and AB in it. It was a very good marriage of new age slickness and old school Bollywood. And yes, Aakhein should feature here above Kaante any day.
No Eklavya? I feel Nishabd, Aankhen & Eklavya, and not Black (as many feel)are his best work after 2000
Anindya.. you are right about khakee.. it was excellent film of santoshi after ghayal and best scene was where big B tells what is duty to cop and dialogue- agar police chahe or sarkar ijazat de to koi gali me chote bache ka khilona nahi chin sakta…
I am E X T R E M E L Y glad that you omitted Black :-)
A Very nice post btw.,
I would have added Black though. Agreed it was over the top performance but thats a director’s failure and not the actor’s. I have always felt, apart from Rajkumar Santoshi and to some extent Ramu, no one is able to balance Bachchan’s persona and acting talent together…even a Govind Nihalani couldn’t do that in Dev!
thanx for the responses friends…
@ anindya
i agree with u on everything about Khakee. i loved the movie. and yeah call it a memory lapse i forgot to mention Cheeni Kum. The movie was good and AB as a sarcastic chef was in full form. Tabu too chipped in with a very natural performance.
@ shreyansh
u have described that scene from Nishabd very well and its true that AB takes the scene to another level. i disagree with u on Khakee though. It was and engrossing movie.
@ sameer
Namak Halal (not Namak haram) released way back in early 80’s so it was not in the list. Nevertheless it is an absolute treat. i still laugh with the same amusement at the scene where ranjit interviews Amitabh.
@ ratnakar
Khakee was entirely gripping for me. After all the second half had the Mahalakshmi shock
Being an Aishwarya rai fan i couldnt sleep for two days.
Dev was disappointing and AB’s performance was regulation good and it didnt have much of an impact.
And yeah in hindsight i feel Aankhein is much better than Kaante. Can anyone like Kaante after watching Reservoir dogs?
Aankhein had a terrific plot line and a good first half but the second half was very disappointing. AB’s performance could be categorized as good but not something which could be revisited.
@ dhananjay
Narayan Shankar was a very unidimensional character. Though obviously one cannot blame AB for it and yeah the scenes between AB and SRK were the saving grace.
KANK- Abhishek was the saving grace for me there though i agree it was nice to see AB as SEXY SAM.
Man, I still think the list is wonderful. But now I realized you left off two of my favorite recent performances – Cheeni Kum and Eklavya.
@ Sridhar
i like all the performances in ur list but for me AB’s best post 2000 is Nishabd.
RGV has managed to extract some amazing performances from AB in the 3 movies they have worked together.
@ RK
ur absolutely right. Amitabh has been consistent in his performances and its true that the lion has got only better with age. The scene from The last Lear which u talked about is one of my favourites. I would also like to mention the scene where he’s drunk and he tries to convince Arjun to let him do the stunt. The scene moved me. AB gets it right even in the cameos case in point being Paheli and VeerZaara.
I am expecting a lot more from him. RGV has rightly described him by saying
‘Amitabh Bachchan is that rare art form which takes birth just once in several life times’.
@ oxy..
that scene from Nishabd was a very poignant one. And yeah i shud have included Eklavya…
@ jahan
as a movie Aankhein shud feature above Kaante but for me the performance in Kaante was much more interesting compared to Kaante
@ Sivakaumar
Thanx a lot.
@ lee
My bad. that was a mistake. they are my favourites too..
Nice list there. And most of what I would’ve wanted to say has already been said by other commenters. However, there is one thing I would like to add to this debate.
Post 2000, AB went on a kind of a rampage with the amount of movies and advertisements he featured in. There was this terrible AB overdose with the paparazzi joining the party too by broadcasting petty things about his clan. This inadverently lead to him piling up one monstrosity over another and that diluted a lot of good work that he dished out.
In light of this, I do agree with the contention that his work in his heydays was far better compared to his work post-2000. The later part of the 80’s and the entire 90’s were the worst part of his career save for the odd Khuda Gawah. It was just that the concentration of quality during his heydays was much higher than post 2000. That’s just my opinion though.
Had he taken it a bit slow…and been a little more discrete with his signings, I feel that brand AB would’ve been much bigger than what it is today. Anyways, I don’t know what compelled him to hit top gear and whatever it was, it’s his life and his decision.
It’s utterly disgraceful that u people consider Amitabh Bachchan’s acting in Black as an over the top performance.On contrary I consider his acting in Black as unquestioned,unsurpassed & the only unique one of it’s kind.