Almost from the beginning, Shabana Azmi gracefully straddled art and mainstream cinema without obvious compromises. Perhaps this can be attributed to her lineage. Azmi was born in 1950 and raised in Bombay.
Her father, Kaifi Azmi, was an eminent Urdu poet who had also written lyrics for scores of Bombay films, her brother is a top-notch cinematographer, and her husband is screenwriter/lyricist Javed Akhar, who wrote some of Indian cinema’s greatest blockbusters as part of the Salim-Javed writing duo. Azmi often laughs at her brief tryst with glamour, but this self-mockery is deceptive. She was born on September 18, 1950.
Though part of the celebrated quartet of "New Cinema" icons (along with Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, and Om Puri) she capitalized on her stature to create and seize opportunities in mainstream films that dared to do something a little different.
In some of her most popular films, like Swami (77) and Apne Paraye (80), both based on Saratchandra Chatterjee novels, she plays “the strong, traditional woman” who overcomes her vulnerabilities with grace.
Azmi has a physiognomy that allows her to readily assume different ethnicities — an important attribute for an ambitious actor who wants to move beyond Hindi cinema. She can be the educated woman whose conscience is roused by her journalist husband’s questionable ethics, as in Kamla (85), based on Vijay Tendulkar’s torn-from-the-headlines play; a low-caste Bihari peasant crushed by an uncaring social system in Paar (The Crossing, 84); a sulky, neglected wife of the Muslim aristocracy in 19th-century Raj India in both Junoon (Obsession, 78) and Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 77); the contemporary Muslim woman of Lucknow in Anjuman (86), who shakes off the constraints of shabby-genteel poverty to galvanize embroidery workers into demanding their rights; an introverted daughter of the Bengali bourgeoisie bedeviled by existential angst in Khandhar (Ruins, 83) and Ek Din Achanak (Suddenly One Day, 89); and, in In Custody (93), the conniving second wife of a renowned Urdu poet who passes off her neglected husband’s work as her own while preening amidst sycophants at soirees (Azmi’s love of Urdu poetry lent Ismail Merchant’s film an ironic subtext).
Call it karmic coincidence: Azmi’s debut coincided with the birth of India’s Parallel Cinema — independent non-mainstream films that began to appear in the mid- Seventies. In broad terms, Parallel Cinema (also known as New Cinema) adopted a naturalistic mode to tell grassroots stories propelled by strong social purpose. Auteurs like Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, and Aparna Sen and directors like Deepa Mehta, Prakash Jha, Goutam Ghosh, and Vinay Shukla had one thing in common: they favored well-defined women as protagonists — and sometimes as the central metaphors of their narratives. A paragon of Parallel Cinema, Azmi handled this double duty with unshowy brilliance.
{{/usCountry}}Call it karmic coincidence: Azmi’s debut coincided with the birth of India’s Parallel Cinema — independent non-mainstream films that began to appear in the mid- Seventies. In broad terms, Parallel Cinema (also known as New Cinema) adopted a naturalistic mode to tell grassroots stories propelled by strong social purpose. Auteurs like Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, and Aparna Sen and directors like Deepa Mehta, Prakash Jha, Goutam Ghosh, and Vinay Shukla had one thing in common: they favored well-defined women as protagonists — and sometimes as the central metaphors of their narratives. A paragon of Parallel Cinema, Azmi handled this double duty with unshowy brilliance.
{{/usCountry}}A protean screen presence, a perfectly modulated voice with an expressive range and impeccable diction, an acute eye for the telling detail, and an osmotic ability to internalize the spirit of each film she’s in: all this makes for a formidable actor’s arsenal. To cap everything, Azmi is willing not only to risk her image but to take on the holy cows of both Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy. For all these reasons it’s easy to see why power + charisma + crusading zeal + leadership = Shabana Azmi. If she stood for election tomorrow (Azmi is presently a nominated member of Parliament*), she’d sweep the liberal vote.
Azmi’s journey from Ankur (The Seedling, 73) to Godmother (99) has been fruitful, replete with memorable characters in landmark films, but her technique doesn’t advertise itself. Take Ankur — her debut film, as well as that of director Shyam Benegal. With a nice mix of sexual languor and peasant cunning, Azmi plays a village maidservant who willingly enters into a liaison with the young landlord even though she is genuinely attached to her deaf-mute husband.
The actress doesn’t just nail the pregnant woman’s waddle, she lets us glimpse the conflicting feelings raging within her: anger at the cowardly landlord’s injustice and protective affection for her husband’s simple goodness.
The article has been sourced from Film Comment.