Why Certain Stories Do Not Need Stars

The issue with the casting of Sanjay Leela Bhasali’s grand production Mary Kom is that it does not reflect what Mary Kom stands for. Does Priyanka look like Mary Kom? No, she looks like Priyanka Chopra with an accentuated pout and a lot of muscle. Do we need a North-Eastern face to play a North-Eastern achiever? Maybe not but well, why not?

Didn’t Ben Kingsley play Gandhi, they ask. Gandhi was not made by an Indian film-maker and Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji.  He was a child of Gujarati Indian descent. Even if he was not, he was the part, not the actor. He was not chosen to play Gandhi because it made business sense. He was the best option. Was any other option even considered for Mary Kom?

The biggest point that Mary Kom’s story makes is that you can come from anywhere and become a national hero. Even if you are from a state that most Indians do not seem to place accurately. And yet, we somehow feel that her story is not powerful enough to be told without Bollywoodisation of the casting process. We think, the story won’t ‘sell’ unless a Priyanka Chopra plays Mary Kom. So ultimately, are we paying a tribute to Mary Kom or the business generating machinery of Bollywood?

So if a gifted North-Eastern actor had played Mary Kom, and if she had been packaged as the next big thing and if the film had been made with the same attention to scale, we would not have gone to see the film? Because let’s face it, we don’t really think an unknown face is worth the price of a ticket. We would rather see Priyanka Chopra with prosthetics pretending to be Mary Kom.

I have no doubt that the film will do very well. It has everything in place except the intent to really celebrate the uniqueness of its muse. And noone is looking for that in our cinema. And now reports say that Ms Chopra will attempt Amrita Pritam in a bio-pic on Sahir Ludhiyanvi. I wonder what fantastic transformative process she will undergo to play the poetess. Will she lose muscle, acquire gravitas and junk the pout and learn to recite ‘Aj akhan Waris Shah Nu’ without remembering that she wrote deathless verse like, In My City? How will she nail Amrita’s steady, deep, soulful gaze, the powerful, unapologetic face, her voice that reminded you that she was a woman who had run with the wolves and survived? How will she play a woman who was not concerned with her physical beauty beyond a point but yearned to be a woman and a writer who had lived and told every story possible?

This was someone who made space for women writers in Punjabi literature and we still think, only  a Bollywood star can do justice to her story! Maybe Vidya Balan can. Sushmita Sen can. Richa Chaddha can. Even Sanam Saeed from across the border can. But we are not thinking that hard, are we? It’s all about selling tickets and even the greatest Punjabi poetess in the sub continent needs a painted pout to reach out and remind us just how great she was.

 with The New Indian Express  

Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of  Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and  where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and  just be silent with her cats.