If creative intellectuals have their way, when the history of Indian Cinema is written, it will be written in two parts: Before Sridevi and After Sridevi. With due respect to Dilip Kumar, Kamal Hassan, and even Amitabh Bachchan, Sridevi stands as the sole female actor in a country whose native cinema has historically preferred its women to be little more than ornamental showpieces to equal and even generally outrank and outshine her male counterparts by building a legacy that is as artistically rich as it is historically significant.
She has achieved every benchmark befitting a historic thespian who is now commonly referred to as "India's Meryl Streep": as the only Indian actor (male or female) to have achieved supremacy in every major regional language of the World's Largest Film Industry, her return to the silver screen is not one that can go unnoticed. This is, to put it mildly, The Return of the Queen.
And now, at age 49, she reinvents the wheel yet again, giving audiences reluctant to view women past the age of 35 as anything other than matronly spinsters a fully existential view of middle-aged femininity that is somber, sweet, and wholly unlike anything Indian cinema has ever dared to say about women of a certain age. Fifteen years after her last film, Judaai (in which she triumphantly played a materialistic husband-selling virago), she returns to the big screen with a difficult but simple story of a middle class housewife named Shashi who finds her life, relationships, and identity limited by the fact that she cannot speak English.
Summoned to New York by her sister to help with the preparations for her niece's upcoming wedding, Shashi finds herself confronted with ideas, customs, and individuals that, while foreign, are not wholly alien to her. She doesn't mind that strangers offer her wine on planes, or that gay couples stroll hand in hand on the Upper West Side. Shashi should be a narrow-minded and provincial simpleton. She is, instead, a warm and accepting woman with a heart of gold who simply doesn't know the language of the world. Or does she?
Like all Sridevi creations, Shashi is complex in both her design and her ambition. Unlike all other Sridevi creations, however, Shashi is firmly rooted in reality. Sridevi has almost exclusively been held to the larger than life standard that has enabled her to play some of the most unique and legendary characters ever enacted by any actress, Indian or otherwise. As Mani Ratnam famously said in 1995, "Asking Sridevi to play the typical heroine role is like asking Picasso to paint your wall."
With due respect to Picasso's creative process, Sridevi is able to conjure miracles in seconds. Shashi has no grand designs on life. Her only desire is to be taken seriously, to know that she is as important as her family members that converse and operate in English when at the office or at school. For her, there is no tragic event that becomes the impetus for her desire to learn English. It is the cumulative effect of a thousand petty humiliations, borne upon her face day after day, as she is derided, diminished, and dismissed as being less than. Shashi knows that she is capable and intelligent; her mind is as open as her heart; and yet no one will take her seriously.
Despite the supporting cast's best efforts, all of the film would be for naught were it not for the heart-poundingly delicate performance from Sridevi who elevates the film as only a master can. That Sridevi is a world-class thespian does not need to be repeated. What does bear pointing out is the utterly flawless way in which Sridevi communicates Shashi's building frustration with her linguistic limitations at every moment when she is derided or disdained by her daughter, husband, or random strangers abroad. It becomes clear to Shashi that no one – not even her loved ones – view her as an individual. She is only to be considered in terms of her social relations- as wife, mother, homemaker. That she is an existential being in her own right, with her own desires and ambitions, is something only Shashi asserts, albeit in complete silence. The look of muted broken heartedness that Sridevi conjures at every slight is something to behold: she swallows her humiliations with bitterness, unsure that this is the way things are supposed to be. Sridevi's frankly perfect performance gives rise to more than just her second innings as an actor: it heralds the beginning of a new Golden Age in Hindi Cinema.
Such expectations aside, critics and Sridevi fanatics alike have all been asking the same question: where does her portrayal of Shashi rank among her legendary performances? Is it of the caliber of her greatest achievements Sadma, Chaalbaaz, Mr. India, and Lamhe? Does it deserve the same consideration of her landmark work in movies like Chandni, Gumrah, and Laadla? All I can positively assert without any hesitation is that Sridevi's Shashi allows her to produce a fine and finessed performance that is unassuming and wise at the same time. Sridevi has long been "afflicted" by the demand that she play only grandiose women. Even "ordinary" women like Chandni became larger-than-life purely because Sridevi was playing them. Her very essence speaks to the isolated, the elevated, and the unique.
As R. Balki has recently said of Sridevi, an actress of her ability is born but once in a thousand years, and that she must continue to act, not only for the sake of her own career but for the sake of cinema itself. Some artists are their medium in such definitive ways that their absence means a weakening of the entire medium itself. Sridevi is, almost 50 years since the beginning of her career, the purest distillation of Acting India has ever known. And if the 15 years since Judaai are any indication, she will remain thus.
She has achieved every benchmark befitting a historic thespian who is now commonly referred to as "India's Meryl Streep": as the only Indian actor (male or female) to have achieved supremacy in every major regional language of the World's Largest Film Industry, her return to the silver screen is not one that can go unnoticed. This is, to put it mildly, The Return of the Queen.
And now, at age 49, she reinvents the wheel yet again, giving audiences reluctant to view women past the age of 35 as anything other than matronly spinsters a fully existential view of middle-aged femininity that is somber, sweet, and wholly unlike anything Indian cinema has ever dared to say about women of a certain age. Fifteen years after her last film, Judaai (in which she triumphantly played a materialistic husband-selling virago), she returns to the big screen with a difficult but simple story of a middle class housewife named Shashi who finds her life, relationships, and identity limited by the fact that she cannot speak English.
Summoned to New York by her sister to help with the preparations for her niece's upcoming wedding, Shashi finds herself confronted with ideas, customs, and individuals that, while foreign, are not wholly alien to her. She doesn't mind that strangers offer her wine on planes, or that gay couples stroll hand in hand on the Upper West Side. Shashi should be a narrow-minded and provincial simpleton. She is, instead, a warm and accepting woman with a heart of gold who simply doesn't know the language of the world. Or does she?
Like all Sridevi creations, Shashi is complex in both her design and her ambition. Unlike all other Sridevi creations, however, Shashi is firmly rooted in reality. Sridevi has almost exclusively been held to the larger than life standard that has enabled her to play some of the most unique and legendary characters ever enacted by any actress, Indian or otherwise. As Mani Ratnam famously said in 1995, "Asking Sridevi to play the typical heroine role is like asking Picasso to paint your wall."
With due respect to Picasso's creative process, Sridevi is able to conjure miracles in seconds. Shashi has no grand designs on life. Her only desire is to be taken seriously, to know that she is as important as her family members that converse and operate in English when at the office or at school. For her, there is no tragic event that becomes the impetus for her desire to learn English. It is the cumulative effect of a thousand petty humiliations, borne upon her face day after day, as she is derided, diminished, and dismissed as being less than. Shashi knows that she is capable and intelligent; her mind is as open as her heart; and yet no one will take her seriously.
Despite the supporting cast's best efforts, all of the film would be for naught were it not for the heart-poundingly delicate performance from Sridevi who elevates the film as only a master can. That Sridevi is a world-class thespian does not need to be repeated. What does bear pointing out is the utterly flawless way in which Sridevi communicates Shashi's building frustration with her linguistic limitations at every moment when she is derided or disdained by her daughter, husband, or random strangers abroad. It becomes clear to Shashi that no one – not even her loved ones – view her as an individual. She is only to be considered in terms of her social relations- as wife, mother, homemaker. That she is an existential being in her own right, with her own desires and ambitions, is something only Shashi asserts, albeit in complete silence. The look of muted broken heartedness that Sridevi conjures at every slight is something to behold: she swallows her humiliations with bitterness, unsure that this is the way things are supposed to be. Sridevi's frankly perfect performance gives rise to more than just her second innings as an actor: it heralds the beginning of a new Golden Age in Hindi Cinema.
Such expectations aside, critics and Sridevi fanatics alike have all been asking the same question: where does her portrayal of Shashi rank among her legendary performances? Is it of the caliber of her greatest achievements Sadma, Chaalbaaz, Mr. India, and Lamhe? Does it deserve the same consideration of her landmark work in movies like Chandni, Gumrah, and Laadla? All I can positively assert without any hesitation is that Sridevi's Shashi allows her to produce a fine and finessed performance that is unassuming and wise at the same time. Sridevi has long been "afflicted" by the demand that she play only grandiose women. Even "ordinary" women like Chandni became larger-than-life purely because Sridevi was playing them. Her very essence speaks to the isolated, the elevated, and the unique.
As R. Balki has recently said of Sridevi, an actress of her ability is born but once in a thousand years, and that she must continue to act, not only for the sake of her own career but for the sake of cinema itself. Some artists are their medium in such definitive ways that their absence means a weakening of the entire medium itself. Sridevi is, almost 50 years since the beginning of her career, the purest distillation of Acting India has ever known. And if the 15 years since Judaai are any indication, she will remain thus.