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on 2008/4/3 4:45:10
Jab We Met was an unexpected hit at the box office, last year. And without a doubt it was Kareena's star power that sold the movie.
A month later another superstar made a comeback. Aaja Nachle released. Here right from the word go, it was Madhuri Dixit on whose name the film was sold.
In this industry female characters have been serving as props for the male lead for decades. And we can have plenty of examples of this.
Katrina portrayed from the love interest in Partner, Tara Sharma sacrificed to the faithful wife in Masti, Aishwarya dedicated to the all sacrificing daughter in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Isha Kopikar as the more common item girl in Company.
Clearly these were characters that are poorly etched and barely defined as sidekicks to the main leads, barring a few exceptions like Kareena in Chameli, or Gul Panag in Dor or even the latest Laga Chunari Mein Daag.
It's perhaps this lack of roles that's now driving actors like Gul Panang and Lara Dutta to write roles for themselves. Lara's writing a period film which she hopes will have a character that better connects with the modern Indian woman.
According to Lara, ''Most of the writers in India are men and they don't understand what this modern woman is, how they need to portray her.'' Lara's views are echoed by another actress from another generation, Dipti Naval.
Both played similar parts in movies called Partner. Films that were made decades apart but with characters that were equally ill-defined.
But unlike her juniors, Naval was lucky to find some refuge in the parallel cinema movement with directors like Shyam Benegal, Saeed Mirza and Sai Paranjpe and co-stars like Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi. Ultimately, as the roles ran out, she says, she had to start writing roles for herself.
''The other thing I don't think exists as much in the cinema of today was romance, romance from cinema is being thrown out of the window. I think we saw the tail end of that idealism. You made a point that Bachchan saheb was a big icon. He was already going outside the law. So you were already seeing the change. Earlier sets of heroes mouthed things like Qanoon apneyhaath mein nahee lena chahiey," says Dipti.
Dipti was making a reference to the angry young man phase, where the male lead rebelled against the system, the female stood by him, wept for him, nursed his wounds but never filled an cinema hall on her own might.
''Post 1975, I would say things have changed. In the last decade, the roles were very plastic, very clinical roles were played by the female leads. Those were not with the body. They were hardly shown in their work environment. These charcaters were just speaking on screen and these characters had no body," says Film Writer Amir Raza.
But as Kareena and Madhuri's films make a mark on the trade figures, actresses say they can see signs of change where roles may not quite measure up to those of the 50s but are certainly getting better than the 70s.
''When my mother saw Jab We Met, she started crying. She kept weeping and said she would never get a role like this when she was acting. Such scripts were just not there. And now with newer scripts coming out hopefully things will only get better'', says Kareena.
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