Ham and Abraham

MARQUEE

Watching Taxi No 9 2 11 the other day, I couldn't help chuckling at the incompetence of John Abraham "" his palpable lack of depth, his utter inability to seethe or glower with any conviction (and he was required to do both these things at length).

We're sometimes needlessly cruel to models-turned-actors but Abraham really is a sitting duck for abuse: his "performance" here reminded me of his appearance with Bipasha Basu in a KBC episode where, in response to a question involving historical dates, he took five minutes to explain why 700 BC must have occurred before 700 AD.

So I have to throw in my lot with a friend who memorably described him as having all the emotion "of a model who's just discovered that the last three feet of the catwalk are missing".

But Johnny Boy is a soft target, so let me turn my critical gaze on his co-star in this movie, the much-admired Nana Patekar. This man's reputation, at least based on the three films of his that I've seen (I must admit those aren't reputed to be among his best), rests on a series of facial tics, the deadpan delivery of throwaway lines (some of which are genuinely funny "" but well, more power to the scriptwriter's pen) and frontbencher-pleasing gimmickry, like the scene where he is simultaneously sobbing and blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.

Patekar, I'm told, was once very effective as a true-blue villain, but now he's graduated to the point where he's playing a caricature of his own early roles "" the mannerisms are intact but underlying it all is a collusion with the audience; we know this guy won't really do anything bad, so we can enjoy his antics without feeling threatened. (Of course, self-caricature is a logical step for many actors who play larger-than-life characters at their peaks "" witness Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson in Hollywood.)

As you may have gathered, I'm not a big Nana Patekar fan, but I think his popularity points to an aspect of screen acting that doesn't get talked about enough "" that indefinable quality known as Star Power, the mysterious connection between a performer and the audience.

Many actors become stars on the basis of this unknowable quality "" because there's something about their own personality that a large section of the audience responds to. Now of course, some of those who have this quality happen to be average performers (think Tom Cruise, think Salman Khan).

But there are also many fine actors who get trapped in an image that becomes impossible to shrug off. And then, for no fault of their own, they become the targets of simplistic phraseology like "oh, he's always playing himself" and "he's such a ham".

Expecting such performers to be "versatile" (an often overrated and misunderstood quality in film acting) in the manner of a chameleon who can sink into different types of roles is pointless "" for we as the audience have made them what they are.

Occasionally, when they get the right opportunity, they show that they can break the mould (remember Shah Rukh Khan in Swades?). But by and large, instead of being versatile in a conventional sense, they have to be versatile within the confines of the stereotyped characters they play.

So does this mean I've revised my opinion of Nana da? Well, not quite, he's still over the top and relies too much on custom-made scripts. But as a sage once said, to be able to overact you need to know how to act in the first place. Give me a performer with too much personality any day over one who has no personality at all (and on that note, back to you, John...)

(jaiarjun@yahoo.com)