Those who have seen Maddock Films’ Param Sundari, directed by Tushar Jalota, are all praise for Janhvi Kapoor’s portrayal of a Malayali woman.
However, there is a disgruntled section out there that feels only a Malayali should play one.
The formidable Shabana Azmi feels such ethnically specific casting is redundant. “By that reasoning, I shouldn’t have played the Hyderabadi characters in Shayam Benegal’s Ankur and Mandi, the Bihari pig herder in Goutam Ghose’s Paar, the Parsi in Vijaya Rao Pestonjee, or the Gujarati gangster in Godmother. By the way, I got the National Award for Paar and Godmother.”
Shabana feels it is an actor’s job to make every character convincing. “It is an actor’s job to play anything and anyone convincingly. Imagine Ben Kingsley not playing Gandhi because he is not Gujarati! You know, the struggle of Asian actors has been, why should only the Caucasians be considered mainstream? And why should the main parts go only to them? I mean, if Sir Laurence Olivier can play Othello, why not an Indian actor? Think about it.”
Says Shabana, “I found Dev Patel’s casting as Charles Dickens in The Personal History Of Charles Dickens acceptable. I remember in a Peter Brooks play many years ago an African-American playing a brother of a Chinese, breaking all barriers of ethnicity. As a powerful director, Brooks made us drop all our prejudices of casting. I think it is all about a willing suspension of disbelief. I know one can do it a little more in theater than cinema. But if we start the process, audiences will learn to accept it.”
Shabana feels Indian cinema has always been accepting of regionalism-free casting. “In Hindi cinema we’ve had ethnic diversity forever. I mean, in my film Fakira, Danny Denzongpa played the sagaa bhai of Shashi Kapoor (laughs). Why should we have a problem with it? I think colour-blind casting is a desirable goal in theater and cinema. Of course there is a movement towards more Asian actors being represented in world cinema. But we still have a long way to go. It will be a while before we become a fundamental part of the international fabric. But in the independent films, Asian actors have a far larger space.”
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