#AmitabhBachchan, #ProsenjitChatterjee, #ShomaChatterji
IBNS-CMEDIA: Amitabh Bachchan is a perfect example of how actors need to grow with “time and technology”, said Tollywood superstar Prosenjit Chatterjee while unveiling a book on the 81-year-old movie legend by film scholar-journalist-author Shoma A. Chatterji in Kolkata recently.
Prosenjit, a hugely popular Bengali film star who is also a known face in tinseltown, touched down a bookstore at a mall in South Kolkata on Tuesday to unveil ‘Amitabh Bachchan As The Other’, the book by Chatterji, whom he has known for quite long.
“The actors have to grow with time and technology and I think Amitabh Bachchan is one of the biggest examples we have in India who went from theatre, radio, to cinema, and I think that this book is a case study for us,” says Prosenjit.
Image by Avishek Mitra/IBNS
Chatterji, as she said, wanted to carve Bachchan out of the “angry young man” persona and explore the other sides of the actor, who has dominated Bollywood for more than 40 years.
Chatterji said, “I tried to map out a completely different insight into the living legend Amitabh Bachchan. I have tried to draw him out of the ‘angry young man’ box he was trapped in, which was limiting his versatility as an actor, and proved that he is much more than the ‘angry young man’.”
Bachchan, who failed to register a dreamy entry into acting in the 1960s despite sharing screen space with then superstar Rajesh Khanna in Anand, turned into an “angry young man” through Prakash Mehra’s action-crime film Zanjeer.
His “angry young man” status was further heightened with his successive films like Deewar, Sholay et al.
Image by Avishek Mitra/IBNS
Chatterji has analysed 15 of Amitabh Bachchan’s films beginning with Anand and ending with Agnipath, spanning 20 years of his journey into the world of “The Other.”
Other films in this study are Parwana, Zanjeer, Saudagar, Namak Haram, Abhimaan, Deewar, Sholay, Amar Akbar Antony, Don, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Shakti, Coolie, and Main Azaad Hoon.
As Chatterji delved deeper into Bachchan’s roles with all her experience, Prosenjit lauds the writer saying, “I think this book is going to inspire a lot of actors and me too because these books and people like Shoma-di, who writes about Bachchan, are both equally important and experienced.”
(Reporting by Ayush Gupta/IBNS)
