Film trailer of Mom tells you why Sridevi will always be the ‘hero’
Three million views in two days and still counting! The trailer of the highly anticipated thriller Mom released on Saturday to euphoric response. Viral across cyberspace and more than 10,000 likes by the first night itself. Trending on Twitter, YouTube and IMDB.
Also releasing in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, the combined views of these regional versions alone has touched 1 lakh. Not to mention the media going bonkers over the promise of a thriller utterly spellbinding.
What makes these figures extraordinary is that the face of Mom is a 53-year-old actress. The Indian film industry, much like its American counterpart, remains notorious for the treatment meted out to leading ladies beyond a certain age. Scripts either evaporate or force them to play Amma to heroes they have been romancing onscreen.
Add public amnesia to this and one sees why senior actresses soon stop registering on the filmy Richter scale.
Which is why the hysteria Mom is generating among Bollywood and the junta may well be celebrated as an anomaly of nature.
But then Sridevi has always been that phenomenal. Hailed as the First Female Superstar of Bollywood, she had decided quite early in her career to pull in crowds on her own. A frightening thought, given that Amitabh Bachchan was dominating the 80s and every other actress wanted to be his leading lady.
And so headlines erupted in 1986 when she began to refuse roles opposite the actor. Filmfare even ran a cover story asking whether the industry belonged to Big B or Sridevi. But the actress politely pointed out that a Bachchan heroine was nothing more than a glorified extra.
That Sridevi’s starring vehicle Nagina released the same year and shattered box-office records, proved how dead right her instincts were. It also gave the industry a new "hero". One who could carry an entire film on her shoulders alone.
Mr India followed and she again eclipsed Anil Kapoor. Critics went on to jibe that the film should perhaps have been named Miss India! Even Yash Chopra, who had mostly written films for male leads, created a female-oriented showcase and immortalised Sridevi as Indian cinema’s Chandni.
But perhaps it is Chaalbaaz which remains the most conspicuous symbol of how Sridevi had become the biggest "hero". With Sunny Deol and Rajinikanth playing mere sidekicks to her central act, she proved her unquestionable supremacy across both north and south India.
Her stardom had soared to such dizzying heights that even the mighty Bachchan had to woo Sridevi with a truckload of flowers to get her opposite him in the epic KhudaGawah.
That Sridevi refused Yash Chopra’s Darr was further testament to the artiste’s respect for her own craft. She had famously told Chopra that she would rather do Shah Rukh Khan’s role than Juhi’s.
Sridevi, the "hero", had come a long way from the conventional heroine. Even Abbas-Mustan who had signed her in a double role opposite SRK in Baazigar, replaced her at the last minute.
The duo developed cold feet that the nation would not sympathise with Shah Rukh’s character if he killed the one and only Sridevi! No wonder Sushmita Sen spoke in an interview that when she joined Bollywood, producers told her that if Sridevi was in a film, no one asked who the hero was!
And so, when Sridevi took a sabbatical in 1997, she waited. Refused films that wanted her to play supporting roles and kept waiting. Waited for 15 years until English Vinglish arrived and asked her to play "hero" again.
There were cynics aplenty predicting all sorts of doom. How would her comeback succeed when the likes of Madhuri and Karisma had failed? Will a totally new generation identify with an actress returning after more than a decade? How will the film work without a big male star?
But "hero" Sridevi triumphed. Triumphed not only in India but on the global stage. The Toronto Film Festival gave her a standing ovation and the American press dubbed her as "India’s Meryl Streep".
Five years later, nothing has changed. Sridevi refused the supporting role in Fitoor. She did the same with Baahubali. That the film has created history does not invalidate her decision in any way.
Casting Sridevi in a small part as Sivagami would have been like casting Bachchan as Katappa! And if there were remuneration issues as voiced by some quarters, what’s wrong with that?
Bollywood heroes charge Rs 50-60 crore while Prabhas alone has bagged Rs 25 crore for Baahubali. Why would Sridevi not demand her due, especially when actresses across Hollywood and Bollywood have been raising serious concerns over unequal pay? And especially when she is hypnotising us again as the main lead in Mom.
In fact, "hero" Sridevi may just have shown the middle finger to industry patriarchy once more!