Midway through Shah Rukh Khan’s latest blockbuster movie, Jawan (2023), the theatre screen freezes as the eponymous hero towers over the audience, that trademark twinkle in his eye, and the lights come on to signal the start of the Intermission. As the advertisements begin to play and most viewers amble out to buy diluted soda and ludicrously priced popcorn, those who remain seated are treated to another avatar of Shah Rukh Khan.
In an advertisement for a spice brand, SRK walks into an immaculate kitchen accompanied by Amitabh Bachchan. The two greats of the Hindi film industry discuss how the ingredients of action and romance can combine to produce the perfect superhit movie. As they discuss their own attributes, Shah Rukh impishly claims the roles of both action hero and romantic leading man, much to his elder colleague’s chagrin. The advertisement ends with Bachchan and Khan in a happy embrace, but in its 35-second runtime, it encapsulates the essence of Jawan. Five decades after the former had forged his identity as the “angry young man”, it was now the turn of the latter to assume that mantle.
It began with Inspector Vijay Khanna in Zanjeer (1973) and through the rest of the decade, Bachchan channelled the discontent of a generation to deliver a string of box-office hits, make history, and cement his position as the preeminent star in the film industry. His prodigious talent shined through in his roles as the bumbling professor of English literature in the comic caper Chupke Chupke (1975) or the lovelorn poet in Kabhi Kabhie (1976). But it was his embodiment of the “angry young man” — often named Vijay — that proved to be his most enduring legacy. His Vijay was not the quintessential hero, the model citizen with unimpeachable morals and unsullied scruples. Vijay operated on the fringes of society — in the liminal space between what is lawful and what is right — and his revolt against the corrupt state machinery and exploitative capitalist forces resonated with a people who felt abandoned, even wronged, by the system.
Over the years, Hindi movies continued to celebrate the anti-hero, the anti-establishment figure who delivered his own brand of justice. Bachchan himself played the textbook template of such a vigilante in Shahenshah (1988). More recently, Aamir Khan sought inspiration from Bhagat Singh, to claim righteous revenge against a corrupt industrialist in Rang De Basanti (2006). But as the new millennium progressed, something changed.
The character of the “angry young man” who had made careers and set the cash registers ringing now had no takers among the supposed A-listers of the Hindi film industry. These superstars — the Aamirs, Akshays, Salmans, Hrithiks, Ranveers, and Ranbirs — often make movies highlighting certain social ills (Akshay Kumar, in particular, seems incapable of doing anything else) but the state remains safe from their ire. In Gully Boy (2019), for instance, Murad (Ranveer Singh in, perhaps, his finest performance) breathes fire into his verses as he rails against the class inequities in society; but his rage is directed at everybody and nobody, it has no tangible target. In his place, would the “angry young man” have left the state off the hook?
The wariness of these celebrities in challenging the establishment — even as an act of fiction — is understandable. Time and again, they have been harassed (and their multi-crore movies boycotted) for making statements that deviate from the party line and raise the spectre of ‘intolerance’. And so, at a time when vocal proponents of the ruling dispensation are winning National Awards and securing coveted postings in film institutes, it seemed safe to assume the sun had set on the “angry young man”. Shah Rukh Khan and Atlee, it turns out, had other ideas.
In Jawan, Shah Rukh’s Azad is no Vijay. He is not quite as angry and not nearly as young. The smouldering angst is replaced by goofy eccentricities and there are attempts at comedy that were best left on the editing floor. But for all their differences, Azad is still very much Vijay’s spiritual heir — the vigilante who has lost faith in the state apparatus and has no qualms in adopting dubious means to achieve honourable ends.
When Azad urges the citizenry to raise their voice and question the state, you cannot help but view it in the context of our current political reality. When Azad reminds the public that in a democracy they can, and should, hold the government accountable, you are reminded that no matter what the IT cells would have you believe, the nation and the government are not the same. And when Azad asks people to look beyond the divisive politics that has rented our country, it is hard not to let the lines between the reel and the real blur.
In the monologue Azad delivers near the end of the movie, the fourth wall breaks and we see Shah Rukh Khan — the brightest luminary in the galaxy that is Bollywood — doing what no actor of his stature has dared to do in the past decade. And for that alone, Jawan dazzles
The writer is a Mumbai-based lawyer
