Even before sitting down to write a tribute to an actor like Nana Patekar, you know that entering such an artist's filmography would be like entering a treasure cave. There are pots full of gold coins, boxes of jewels, piles of precious stones and stacks of gold bars. All you can do is run from one to the other. You will never be able to bring everything out.
You scroll up and down the filmography. On Wikipedia, it starts from 'Gaman' (1978) and goes on to a special appearance in 'Subedaar' (2026). Then the futility of your action settles in. You start weighing which one to pick. The first movie you saw of Nana Patekar, which also happens to be written and directed by him — the 1991 movie 'Prahaar'. Or the one you watched on Doordarshan on August 15, for which he received the National Award for Best Actor — the 1994 movie 'Krantiveer'. Or a compilation of his cop movies. Or the movie in which he is the emperor of theatre, the 2016 Marathi movie 'Natsamrat', which you gobbled up mainly because you had never seen Nana on stage and partly because of your love for theatre.
Then there are those umpteen movies that you watched and rewatched on rented VHS tapes. That list has only limited numbers since very few VHS tapes of his movies were 'released' in the village cassette shop.
Then you settle down on his 1998 film 'Yugpurush', Partho Ghosh's adaptation of the Bengali film 'Aparichita' (1969), based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' — the first movie of his you watched on the big screen. If memory serves me correctly, it was at Kozhikode's Crown Theatre.
Other than your love for cinema and theatre, you knew nothing about acting. You only knew that this actor would come on screen and, when there was an emotionally charged scene, deliver his dialogues with a kind of sincerity you had not seen from anyone until then. You knew that he would push the words out until he ran out of breath, something you had not seen any other actor do.
Years later, you hear from actors and acting trainers that actors should have control over their breath and that dialogue should be paced precisely to avoid rushing because of a lack of breath. Then you realise this person never gave a hoot about that theory. For him, it is the moment that decides the response from the character. Or at least he delivers something that feels spontaneous.
So you are sitting in the theatre expecting the goosebump moments you got while watching 'Prahaar' and 'Krantiveer' on Doordarshan on your Keltron colour TV.But Partho Ghosh has a different idea.
The introduction shot of Nana as Anirudh demolishes your expectations. Your hero — or villain, you are happy to see him in both shades — is an inmate of a hospital for people with mental disabilities. As the camera reveals Nana, you can see the tenderness of life in his eyes. A softness on his face that you were not expecting from him.It disappoints you as a teenager. But you hang in.
Now, when you revisit that sequence, you realise that Anirudh is not singing but communicating with his God. And when he speaks, his voice is even more tender than the moist eyes you saw in the opening shot.
Anirudh is vulnerable. His insecurities and inhibitions about stepping into the real world, from the safety of the hospital where he has spent 25 years, can be seen not just on his face but in his body language as well. The way he holds the cloth bag to his chest, hiding his heart, which has never been exposed to the real world, says something about him. Yet there is no firmness in his grip. Even in the way he holds the bag, there is softness.
Sunita (Manisha Koirala), an escort, encounters the innocence of a man, for perhaps the first time in her life on a train, in Anirudh, when he tells Paresh (Shivaji Satam), accompanying Sunita, that he is awake and not asleep, and that their words fell on his ears; he was not eavesdropping.
It is also Nana telling us that he doesn't need the agitated, rushed dialogue delivery to touch us. When the character demands restraint in acting and dialogue, he can still be effective enough.
This is exactly the opposite of the 'Krantiveer' climax, where he rips into the collective inaction of our society with the "aagaye meri maut ka tamasha dekhne…". He builds the momentum with a hearty laugh, which slowly merges into the dialogue. In a recent interview given to Saurabh Dwivedi of The Lallantop, he revealed that this part was unwritten and he made it up on the spot. Whatever was delivered in the heat of the moment stays relevant even today.
It is not that Pradeep Ghatak's screenplay didn't have a moment that could unleash the Nana familiar to us. The climax sequence, where Anirudh relapses after seeing the dead body of Sunita, murdered by his friend Ranjan (Jackie Shroff), could have allowed Nana Patekar to bring back the eccentricity he is well known for.
But instead, he hits an acting peak with a restrained performance.
The body goes rigid, and even without touching it, you feel it.
When his doctor (Yashwant Dutt) is brought back, we see a close-up of Anirudh. The eyes are lifeless, not just because they are dry, but because they seem locked in a fathomless darkness. Every muscle on his face lacks life. He resembles a mummy.Nana showed us that he didn't need the maximum to deliver the maximum. He could be just as effective while being minimal.
While watching Wim Wenders's 'Perfect Days', I wished I could see a remake of that film featuring Nana Patekar. It was perhaps one of my wildest dreams.Now, it would remain unachievable.
(In Makes Sense, Sajesh Mohan explores the politics, ideas and cultural forces that shape the stories and conversations around us — from public affairs to popular culture. Opinions expressed are personal.)