Unconventional
and scorchingly talented, Irrfan minces no words when
it comes to Bollywood. Will his role in Mira Nair’s high-octane
new project The Namesake get him what he wishes? Rahul Bhatia
does a spot check
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Lone
Ranger: Irrfan, always seeking to dwarf his last role |
| |
We
don’t give an actor a world he can immerse himself in. We’re
almost detached. We don’t want an actor to put himself in
the line of fire, we just want him to perform |
Let’s
start with how you began.
I used to be very
shy, enclosed; I hated school, but I had a passion for certain things
— cricket, patang-baazi. And then suddenly there was this film
movement with Naseer and Om — they were mesmerising. They just
gave you a new definition of entertainment and performance. They inspired
me to want to learn the craft. Then somebody told me about the National
School of Drama (NSD).
You’ve
said elsewhere that NSD wasn’t all you hoped it would be. What
were you expecting?
I was naive. I
expected that they would teach me to act. But now I know that in any
creative institution, there’s no guarantee that they will teach
you creativity. An institute can provide you an atmosphere and can and
expose you to new things. But acting is an art that you have to do to
learn. You can’t think about it. It’s like swimming. You
have to get into water to learn it. But I was fortunate to be at NSD.
It changed my perceptions about myself. Suddenly I had to see things
objectively, from a distance.
Because
acting requires an actor to let go of himself, does it also reveal him
to himself?
Yes. There was
a basic need for me to let go of myself. Acting requires that. It also
cures you somewhere or the other. You try to deal with yourself. I have
a hidden relationship with adulation. I want to be cured of the desire
for appreciation. It’s like a disease.
Wasn’t
The Warrior something that lingered for a while?
Definitely. There
are very few stories, very few units, very few directors who can engulf
you. And The Warrior was that kind of film. I was doing television then,
and it was the first time I’d had done a film in one go. The film
was shot in extreme conditions, and at first I thought I wouldn’t
be able to take it. But the body adapted to it and it became an experience.
And the kind of approach Asif Kapadia (the director) had was fascinating
for me. I was bored to death with the kind of work Indian cinema demands.
You have to say each and every thing. You can’t live in the character’s
moment. And here was a director who said, ‘Don’t indicate
what you’re feeling, just be there.’ In our films we have
to demonstrate what we feel, even if the actor doesn’t feel it.
I was looking for something deep, a connect, where I didn’t have
to show.
Is demonstration
done because the audience demands it, or is it because of a notion of
what the audience demands?
The demonstration
is in the director’s subconscious — because he depends on
it, he doesn’t explore cinematic language. Our industry has not
evolved that much. We want to communicate through what an actor says,
not through the camera or the language of cinema. Most of us just put
the camera somewhere and ask the actor to say what the story wants to
say. But that’s not cinema. I think they don’t see the need
to do otherwise. They accentuate everything: ‘Actor ki aankhon
mein aansoo hoga, woh ro raha hoga, music bhi ro raha hoga, saamne waala
bhi ro raha hoga.’ They hammer it in.
2003 was
an interesting year for you in terms of names. The Internet movie database
has listed you as Irfan Khan, Irrfan, and then Irfaan with two ‘a’s.
Were the name changes for reasons of luck?
It’s a mistake.
It was never Irfaan. I added an ‘r’, definitely, but not
for numerological reasons. It was about phonetics. But incidentally
Irrfan added up to a good number, and I’m not proud of it. Sometimes
I don’t like myself for doing this. I was trying to fool myself.
My mother said it sounded correct, the phonetics were right.
People talk
of an actor’s bankability, in terms of hits or flops. But isn’t
an actor just one part of the project?
I think the actor
gets undue importance. I think that’s because storytelling is
done through the actor. Our commercial cinema depends on personality.
It doesn’t have to deal with the truth of the situation. It works
on the charisma of an actor. Ek simple line hogi, Amitabh Bachchan will
say it, people will be mesmerised.
But then
isn’t a personality, in this sense, also a form of stereotyping?
Well, people do
want to see them again and again because we don’t have a culture
of seeing different stories and characters. We don’t have a culture
of realism. We had a history of Parsi theatre. We had melodrama and
jugglery. In all our folk forms there’s no tradition of acting,
although the Natya Shastra has a method which people haven’t practiced
and evolved. Acting doesn’t count here, actually. You don’t
need to act, you’re not required to be an actor to be successful
in this industry. You have to be comfortable in front of the camera,
you do whatever they want you to do, and you do it being yourself —
you don’t have to put on a character. You don’t have to
understand any other person.
How do you
prepare for your roles?
There are many
ways. It depends on the role. Sometimes you need to know the physicality
of the character. If he’s a taxi driver, I should know how to
drive a taxi, the physicality of it. Then you try and understand his
emotional construction. What he wants, what his drive is, why he’s
there in the story. What if he takes a different stance, what will it
do to the story? But that’s if I respect the story. If I don’t,
I try to entertain you. Like Gunnah. I knew it was for frontbenchers,
so I tried to amuse them. With Maqbool, I know I didn’t have to
supersede the story. I had to give myself in and be invisible, so that
I didn’t distract from the story, so that I carry the story.
Do you ever
feel the danger that your roles and your inner world might overlap?
We don’t
have that kind of cinema. We don’t give an actor that kind of
a world to immerse himself in. We’re almost detached. We don’t
want an actor to put himself in the line of fire, we just want him to
perform. If we have those kind of films people will be affected. I heard
Saif Ali Khan say after Omkara, ‘When will I be over and done
with this role?’ Sometimes it does affect you. That’s why
after The Warrior I detested the idea of taking up Haasil. The Warrior’s
world was completely different. It was about a man fighting with his
own past, it was a mesmerising journey. And here, in Haasil, is Ranvijay
Singh, a person who’s trying to manipulate things, and there are
so many negative thoughts. I didn’t want to think like that, I
didn’t want to deal with that person. So it took me quite a while
to get over The Warrior.
How did
you research and approach the life of Ashoke Ganguli in The Namesake?
That film consumed
me. I almost wanted to get away from it. Here’s this guy who’s
almost invisible, he doesn’t have any presence. That was the most
challenging thing for me to do — to do a role in such a manner
that you don’t catch attention. Being that docile, that unobtrusive,
really took some effort. And to go through the experience of old age
was painful. It was taxing to experience it.
A layperson
can’t tell where the role ends and where acting begins. But can
other actors?
Yeah, one can make
out when an actor’s trying to supersede the story, or when he
has underperformed, or how much scope the role had. Definitely.
Is knowledge
of film history important for actors, to know where they come from?
No, although if
you have information, somewhere it all adds up. But I don’t think
it’s necessary. It’s your understanding of the situation
and human beings that counts. I don’t think an actor has to be
intelligent or socially aware. Sometimes a dumb actor is better than
an intelligent one because intelligence can be a hurdle in believing
in an incredible situation.
Are the
actors you like the same ones you learn from?
I do. Sometimes.
It’s automatic. You like people who surprise you. You’d
be surprised, but I like Deven Bhojani. There’s a serial called
Office Office. You should see how good he is. He’s so entertaining,
so fluent. Nowadays I don’t watch De Niro.
He’s done
it all. Now acting doesn’t mean anything to him. He’s into
something else. Towards the end I could see the fatigue in Marlon Brando.
He was tired of this pretending.
Every artist
has a lifespan.
Yes, every artist
does. After a point your priorities change. At a young age, you need
that attention, your priorities are different. After a point age takes
over and your concerns change. But then there’s Anthony Quinn,
there’s Om Puri. Om’s the same, he’s so balanced!
I tell him, ‘Tum kya sant ho?’ He goes into any setup and
it doesn’t affect him! I think it’s because he doesn’t
tax himself much, which is why it doesn’t become a burden.
Is it tempting
to give people that one great line, that one great scene, which they
remember you by for ever?
No. I’d like
to go beyond that. I don’t want to be known for that one moment
that I created. I do wonder when I’ll get a script that will make
people forget Maqbool and Haasil. It bothers me and depresses me when
I think, ‘Is there nothing beyond those two movies?’ I want
to keep doing things that become a rage. I don’t want to look
back at the past and say, ‘Oh, those were the good times, that
role back then was the one.’ That would be a pathetic situation.
I don’t want to think like that. Never. Never.
