Roads to Mohanlal

[I started off writing this comment in the Uttam Kumar thread just below this but then thought it deserved its own thread. I have mostly used this opportunity to expand on my 'sense' of Mohanlal. I have said very much on Bachchan in very many contexts and this does not need to be repeated. Therefore I've been relatively brief on him. The 'pleasure' (if you will) here has been afforded by this tentative response to Mohanlal's singularity..]

Sometime back I put up a piece on Dilip Kumar that sparked much debate. But if one wants to understand what I find problematic about Dilip Kumar watch Uttam Kumar! The latter is a true ‘natural’ actor while with Dilip Kumar there is always a ‘stylization’ of the natural, an intense exaggeration of it over time. Both stars were considered refreshingly natural alternatives to the very theatrical acting styles prevalent before them. However Dilip Kumar does this in a much more showy way, certainly so after the initial few years, and Uttam Kumar on the other hand can often seem like a character actor in his restraint. Which is not to say the latter could not be star (in terms of the proper gesturality) when he wanted to be so. The great thing about Ray’s film (Nayak) in this context is that he brings to the fore this entire ‘history’ of the star. I would not place Uttam Kumar as a pure actor with the likes of Bachchan or Mohanlal but he is quite remarkable in his own right (though this kind of statement would get me lynched in Bengal where he is their MGR). Having now seen a few dozen films of his (from his very first hit to some of his late films more than 20 years later) I’d say that there are only a handful of Indian star-actors I like more than him.

Much as with Dilip Kumar there is a stylization of the natural with Bachchan it’s the very opposite. Here there is a naturalization of style (or even the stylized). In all his larger than life performances it is ‘excess’ that seems most naturalized, it is the ‘outlandish’ that becomes most comprehensible. Of course the actor has more than this mode in his arsenal. There are those somewhat earlier moments in his career where the natural performance is laced with the star’s gesturality. But equally there are those ‘superstar’ or ‘one man industry’ acts that seem to defeat traditional mimetic registers. The Shakespeare effect in a sense. So yes no one speaks like the characters of Shakespeare and yet they are more ‘familiar’ than those who aspire towards greater realism. Bachchan repeatedly makes the implausible wholly natural. Dilip Kumar creates a signature out of a virtue and tarnishes the latter.

Mohanlal’s mode is one I would define as ‘quirky naturalism’. There is always something more than a little subversive in his performances but this coupled with the quirkiness seems most natural within the world of his films. It is easy to miss the extraordinary economy of this great star-actor’s craft. A strong mismatch between the Mohanlal persona and the world he inhabits often prevails at the outset. He always seems other to the ‘normal’ of his environment. But so gloriously understated is his pitch and tone as a performer, so deceptively restrained his subversion that it is nearly impossible to spot where the transition occurs when his quirkiness becomes more ‘natural’ than anything or anyone else in his surroundings. To watch a Mohanlal movie in this context is to experience a bridge being built between a ‘stable’ world and a deceptively subversive intervention on the actor’s part. The miracle here is that one starts off at the former end witnessing the Mohanlal character emerge with all his oddities and then somewhere one has crossed the bridge and gone over to the other side without this ever becoming apparent. A vanishing point of performance. The crossing takes place but it can never quite be pinpointed in any of his films. This is why his craft is always exquisitely potent for his quintessential comedies (in his masala efforts there is a much greater obviousness which diminishes this ‘quirkiness’ but even here some of the earlier efforts are more interesting than the later ones where the actor seems evidently bored by repetition.. later Mohanlal is in any case a very different ‘field’ of signification..).

Here an interesting contrast might be introduced with Mammootty (for whom also I have great admiration). When these two great giants share screen space in that prolific (and prolifically fine) Malayalam ‘middle cinema’ of the 1980s (and occasionally after this) it is Mammootty who represents the ‘stable’ world while Mohanlal constantly tries to circumvent its ‘naturalness’. Put differently Mammootty is the iconic representative of the world as it is. Mohanlal on the other hand is constantly, if surreptitiously, undermining this very world, creating an alternate one in its interstices. His is almost a ‘feminine’ principle that destabilizes the institutional ‘macho’ masculinity of Mammotty’s own singular interventions. If Mammootty is the great canonical ambassador of his universe Mohanlal is the charming imp forever destabilizing it (one could do an entire study focused on how these stars use their body language, specially their gait, to illustrate all of this.. Mohanlal for example is ‘choreographic’).

Compared to Bachchan and Mohanlal Uttam Kumar is more traditionally ‘naturalistic’. This is not meant to be critical of the latter’s gifts but Bachchan and Mohanlal are also magicians besides being great at their craft. They have radically differing modes but each star in turn absorbs the world into his signature. ‘Natural’ then is whatever these stars touch. Uttam Kumar or Mammootty ultimately are ‘of’ this world whereas Bachchan and Mohanlal are always somewhat foreign to it and yet this essential ‘difference’ is always veiled in the respective performances.