Expresso Bollywood Feature on the career and legacy of Irrfan Khan

You are listening to the Expresso Entertainment Update. Here is a special feature on the career and legacy of late actor Irrfan Khan, brought to you by the Indian Express

Irrfan Khan’s career is remembered for his many stellar performances in films like Paan Singh Tomar, The Namesake, Life of Pi, among many more but ardent Hindi film viewers will definitely remember that while Irrfan could pull off some critically acclaimed roles, he also had a parallel track in his career – the one where he made some strange choices but was completely self-aware about it. In Thank You, Aan: Men At Work, and a few more, Irrfan was the best part of an otherwise mediocre film but it was extremely obvious that the actor was in on the joke. Irrfan’s presence in these films was in fact a reminder for the audience that you are not supposed to take it seriously, because even he wasn’t doing so.

Anees Bazmee’s Thank You had Irrfan playing a cheating husband. The plot of the film was completely idiotic and Irrfan was well aware that he wasn’t making cinematic history here. While talking about how he works on such characters, he told Film Companion in 2017, “Don’t research on the character, don’t find its background and see its behaviour. Don’t bring in all these shades, don’t work too much over it. Just flow with the flow. Have a good time when you are doing Anees Bazmee’s movie. You have related to that humour. You have enjoyed that so go on the sets and have fun.”

Thank You was classified as a comedy but you wonder how Irrfan landed in Sanjay Gupta’s green-tinted world in Jazbaa. Irrfan was spouting dialogues like ‘Rishto pe bharosa aur mobile pe network naa ho toh log game khelne lagte hain”. In one of his interviews, he describe it as “attitude vali acting.” Jazbaa was over the top, had Aishwarya Rai yelling her lungs out and Irrfan just casually said his dramatic dialogues as if it was just another day at the office for him. “When I am doing a film with one-liners, I have to give those one-liners and enjoy it. You shouldn’t be skeptical about it. Just have fun,” he said in the same conversation with Film Companion.

This persona of the actor was quite evident in the few AIB sketches that he performed in those days. His Bollywood party song video with the comedy group was a dig at all the club songs Hindi films were doing in those days, and Irrfan was not above taking a few digs at himself while he was at it.

Irrfan was truly a master at balancing his art, with something that shouldn’t be taken as seriously because how else would you explain that the year he appeared in The Namesake was the same year that he did a film called The Killer with Emraan Hashmi. In The Killer, Irfan played a psychopath who is on a murder spree and while nothing about this film was remotely good, Irrfan seemed like he knew why he was there – to have fun.

Irrfan’s big introduction to the West was Slumdog Millionaire, and in many ways, that is true. While he had appeared in a few significant films by that point, Slumdog opened a lot of doors for him. Doors that could lead him to pick the best of roles, but Irrfan still chose to have fun while working in Hindi movies.

Aseem Chhabra’s biography on the late actor titled Irrfan Khan: The Man, The Dreamer, The Star says that before Irrfan, the role was offered to Kay Kay Menon and at one point, even Kamal Haasan was in the mix. Naseeruddin Shah, who was already on board by then, vetoed this. “I said, ‘Look, if you are talking to him, then I am out’,” shared Shah with Aseem. Irrfan, who had been around for a while but was still looking for his big break got a chance in this Shakespearean adaptation, thanks to his work in Haasil.

Irrfan recalled that their kids went to the same school at the time and upon a chance meeting, Irrfan asked Vishal to watch Haasil. He said, “I waited for him to call me after watching the film. The next day, I called him so he said I was just about to call you. Then he said, I am making Macbeth.” Later, Naseeruddin Shah called Irrfan’s casting a “masterstroke.”

When Naseeruddin Shah wrote an obituary in Irrfan’s memory for The Indian Express, the actor recounted the scene where Irrfan’s acting left him hanging between real-life and fiction. “There is this scene in the film between Maqbool and Kaka, played by Piyush Mishra. It’s the famous Shakespearean scene where Macbeth is confronted by Banquo’s ghost at the banquet. In Maqbool, when Kaka’s body is brought to the pyre, Irrfan kneels down in a show of grief and the dead body opens its eyes. When we were rehearsing the scene, Piyush was lying on the pyre. Irrfan sat down near him and I was standing behind him. I didn’t realise that the rehearsal had begun. After a while, Irrfan toppled over backwards. I reached out to support him. I assumed he’d lost his balance. And those peacock-feather-shaped eyes, as Ismat Chughtai describes Saadat Hasan Manto’s eyes, turned towards me and said: “Naseer bhai, I am trying to act. Why are you helping me?” I don’t think this has ever happened to me that I watched an actor perform and took it to be real,” he wrote.

Filmmaker Anup Singh, who worked with the late Irrfan Khan on two films–Qissa and The Song of Scorpions–planned to continue making movies with him till they were in their nineties. He had enough scripts ready to go. But Irrfan died in 2020, after a two-year battle with cancer.

As a grieving process, Singh has written a book about his bond with the actor. Titled Irrfan: Dialogues with the Wind. In an excerpt published on Scroll.in, Singh wrote about paying Irrfan a visit in hospital, and observed how the actor was facing the inevitable with strength and fortitude.
The actor admitted that sometimes, he’s scared. “Not always, but sometimes. Angry also. Bitter. Furious. Sad. Sadness is the worst. What could be. What could have been…”

On his death anniversary, his fans are sure to remember some of his celebrated films but let’s not forget that Irrfan was probably one of the coolest actors of his time who did not look down upon any kind of cinema, and had fun doing whatever he picked.

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