akbarnali

Bollywood has a problem. And that problem's name is 'Sridevi'.

Gone (mercifully) are the days when actresses over the age of 40 were automatically relegated to matronly roles (see Nutan, Rakhee, Farida Jalal, and even Rekha and Dimple for proof of this). We're lucky enough to live in an age when many actresses over a certain age abound in modern Hindi cinema: apart from Sri herself in Mom, we recently saw Manisha Koirala (Dear Maya), Raveena Tandon (Maatr), Kajol (Dilwale), Juhi Chawla (Chalk n Duster), Aishwariya Rai (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil) and Tabu (Fitoor) taking center stage in major films, all playing roles that required them to do more than serve as mother figures to younger protagonists. Credit this to expanding mindset of an audience that has gradually woken up to the fact that women are interesting (and, indeed, desirable) outside the customary Bollywood sphere of commercial romance.

So what's the problem? The problem is that Sridevi has outgrown Bollywood. Arguably the greatest actor of her generation (and certainly a far more potent performer than the would-be usurpers who followed her), Sridevi has come to be regarded by the media and masses alike as "The Indian Meryl Streep". Which, though she may be, is secondary to the fact that she is "The Indian Sridevi". India has not witnessed an actor as complete and transformational as Sridevi since the dawn of cinema – so it makes sense that in the wake of her career as a mainstream leading lady, Bollywood is forced to confront a quandary unlike any other it's faced in the past.

Having outgrown the usual romantic roles of her repertoire in the '80s and '90s (her last of which was her bewitching turn as the shrewish virago in Judaai), Bollywood now has the dilemma of trying to figure out what to do with a talent the size and scope of Sridevi's (hint: it has no clue). Asking Sridevi to play "the mother" or "some generic older female relative" is like asking Picasso to paint a wall: you do not – indeed, cannot – ask a genius to perform the mundane. We know what she is capable of; hers is a talent whose full potential can never be tapped (I'm quoting Shekhar Kapur here). What, then, is an industry built around the trope of 20-something romantic musicals to do with an actor like Sridevi?

Sridevi is intelligent enough about her artistry to know that audiences will not accept her in the same mould of the past. She isn't the comic sprite of Chaalbaaz or Mr. India anymore – nor does she insist that she be treated as such. This is something megastar actors seem to have trouble accepting: remember Amitabh's disastrous re-entry into Bollywood as a leading/angry young man with "Mrityudaata"? Madhuri Dixit would also do well to learn this lesson given that she continues to insist that she be featured in song-n-dance roles (and now dance- themed television shows) which don't go over particularly well with either critics or audiences.

Which brings us to 'Mom'.

Bollywood is obsessed with rape. It's a trope that the Largest Film Industry in the World has relied upon quite steadily since the early 80s when every hero from Mithun Chakraborty to Amitabh Bachchan to Govinda regularly avenged the rapes (or would-be rapes) of his sister/daughter/and even mother. Leading men even play "hero" rapists from time to time: remember Anil Kapoor playing an unrepentant rapist in Benaam Badshah who is only tamed (incredulously) by the love of his victim (Juhi Chawla)? Things got (marginally) better when the same Anil Kapoor offered to marry a rape victim (Aishwarya Rai) when she was forced to consider marrying her rapist (Puru Raj Kumar) in Hamara Dil Aap Ke Paas Hai. Progress? Well, okay.

Mom – which follows a stepmother's journey to avenge the gang rape of her stepdaughter - has summarily been compared to the standard '80s Bollywood potboiler in which the (male) hero restores the dignity of his beloved by killing off her rapists. Ravi Udyawar's directorial debut certainly has this trope at its center, but the film reminded me in many ways of Sridevi's 1996 film Army, in which she plays a widow seeking to avenge the murder of her young husband (Shah Rukh Khan). Mom is a far, far superior film to Army, but the resemblance between the story lines is difficult to ignore. Sridevi was pure arresting melodrama in Army (as only she can pull off – remember the brilliant scene in which her pregnancy was revealed?) and holds a more nuanced yet bitter tone in Mom. But in Mom she's also an army of one, choosing to go it alone when the law lets her down and even a good cop named Francis (Akshaye Khanna) seems eager to thwart her maternal yearning for justice.

Yes, Sridevi's performance is devastating and brilliant, but even more than that, this is a performance which is agonizing to witness. She summons not only the tentative love of an unwanted stepmother, but brings to the surface the burden of a raw, all-consuming pain of a parent drowning in her child's misery. Much has been said about Devki's quest for revenge, but almost nothing is mentioned about the quiet moments of steeliness and stillness which punctuate Sridevi's performance throughout the film.

Watch, for example, the many scenes between Sridevi and Nawazuddin Siddiqui (Daya Shankar, the detective). She expertly conveys the resigned feelings of an unwanted quest, of a heroine in search of a destination she never wanted to seek out. Revenge is not something to be celebrated, her body language tells us, but it is (in some scenarios, it seems) the only path to resolution. She asks her cohorts on one occasion: if you must choose between wrong and very wrong, which will you choose? She will emerge victorious, we know from the outset; but she is also already defeated.

If creative intellectuals have their way, when the history of Indian Cinema is written, it will be written in two parts: Before Sridevi and After Sridevi. With due respect to Dilip Kumar, Kamal Hassan, and even Amitabh Bachchan, Sridevi stands as the sole female actor in a country whose native cinema has historically preferred its women to be little more than ornamental showpieces to equal and even generally outrank and outshine her male counterparts by building a legacy that is as artistically rich as it is historically significant.

She has achieved every benchmark befitting a historic thespian who is now commonly referred to as "India's Meryl Streep": as the only Indian actor (male or female) to have achieved supremacy in every major regional language of the World's Largest Film Industry, her return to the silver screen is not one that can go unnoticed. This is, to put it mildly, The Return of the Queen.

And now, at age 49, she reinvents the wheel yet again, giving audiences reluctant to view women past the age of 35 as anything other than matronly spinsters a fully existential view of middle-aged femininity that is somber, sweet, and wholly unlike anything Indian cinema has ever dared to say about women of a certain age. Fifteen years after her last film, Judaai (in which she triumphantly played a materialistic husband-selling virago), she returns to the big screen with a difficult but simple story of a middle class housewife named Shashi who finds her life, relationships, and identity limited by the fact that she cannot speak English.

Summoned to New York by her sister to help with the preparations for her niece's upcoming wedding, Shashi finds herself confronted with ideas, customs, and individuals that, while foreign, are not wholly alien to her. She doesn't mind that strangers offer her wine on planes, or that gay couples stroll hand in hand on the Upper West Side. Shashi should be a narrow-minded and provincial simpleton. She is, instead, a warm and accepting woman with a heart of gold who simply doesn't know the language of the world. Or does she?

Like all Sridevi creations, Shashi is complex in both her design and her ambition. Unlike all other Sridevi creations, however, Shashi is firmly rooted in reality. Sridevi has almost exclusively been held to the larger than life standard that has enabled her to play some of the most unique and legendary characters ever enacted by any actress, Indian or otherwise. As Mani Ratnam famously said in 1995, "Asking Sridevi to play the typical heroine role is like asking Picasso to paint your wall."

With due respect to Picasso's creative process, Sridevi is able to conjure miracles in seconds. Shashi has no grand designs on life. Her only desire is to be taken seriously, to know that she is as important as her family members that converse and operate in English when at the office or at school. For her, there is no tragic event that becomes the impetus for her desire to learn English. It is the cumulative effect of a thousand petty humiliations, borne upon her face day after day, as she is derided, diminished, and dismissed as being less than. Shashi knows that she is capable and intelligent; her mind is as open as her heart; and yet no one will take her seriously.

Despite the supporting cast's best efforts, all of the film would be for naught were it not for the heart-poundingly delicate performance from Sridevi who elevates the film as only a master can. That Sridevi is a world-class thespian does not need to be repeated. What does bear pointing out is the utterly flawless way in which Sridevi communicates Shashi's building frustration with her linguistic limitations at every moment when she is derided or disdained by her daughter, husband, or random strangers abroad. It becomes clear to Shashi that no one – not even her loved ones – view her as an individual. She is only to be considered in terms of her social relations- as wife, mother, homemaker. That she is an existential being in her own right, with her own desires and ambitions, is something only Shashi asserts, albeit in complete silence. The look of muted broken heartedness that Sridevi conjures at every slight is something to behold: she swallows her humiliations with bitterness, unsure that this is the way things are supposed to be. Sridevi's frankly perfect performance gives rise to more than just her second innings as an actor: it heralds the beginning of a new Golden Age in Hindi Cinema.

Such expectations aside, critics and Sridevi fanatics alike have all been asking the same question: where does her portrayal of Shashi rank among her legendary performances? Is it of the caliber of her greatest achievements Sadma, Chaalbaaz, Mr. India, and Lamhe? Does it deserve the same consideration of her landmark work in movies like Chandni, Gumrah, and Laadla? All I can positively assert without any hesitation is that Sridevi's Shashi allows her to produce a fine and finessed performance that is unassuming and wise at the same time. Sridevi has long been "afflicted" by the demand that she play only grandiose women. Even "ordinary" women like Chandni became larger-than-life purely because Sridevi was playing them. Her very essence speaks to the isolated, the elevated, and the unique.

As R. Balki has recently said of Sridevi, an actress of her ability is born but once in a thousand years, and that she must continue to act, not only for the sake of her own career but for the sake of cinema itself. Some artists are their medium in such definitive ways that their absence means a weakening of the entire medium itself. Sridevi is, almost 50 years since the beginning of her career, the purest distillation of Acting India has ever known. And if the 15 years since Judaai are any indication, she will remain thus.