THERE is enough evidence to back up the theory that Alia Bhatt is the number one leading lady in Bollywood right now.
She headlines this week’s big Bollywood release Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani and then makes her Hollywood debut in action thriller Heart of Stone, which has a Netflix world premiere on August 11. The big budget back-to-back blockbusters in contrasting genres show off the remarkable range of the actress and demonstrate just how much in demand she is.
Eastern Eye used both worldwide blockbusters as a perfect excuse to rank all of Alia Bhatt’s films, based on her performance and just how good (or not) each one is. (The countdown doesn’t include cameos or her small supporting role in RRR).
16. Sadak 2 (2020): The idea of starring in a sequel to 1991 film Sadak and teaming up with her legendary director father Mahesh Bhatt may have seemed like a great one, but it turned out to be the worst choice Alia has made. Whether it was the silly storyline, poor performances or outdated direction, nothing worked about this absolute stinker. Sadak 2 (above) crashed at the box office and its trailer became one of the most disliked videos in YouTube history.
15. Shaandaar (2015): The romantic comedy couldn’t make use of the crackling chemistry between Alia and her leading man Shahid Kapoor because of the incredibly poor writing. Instead of having any kind of cohesive storyline, it was more like a series of silly sketches and didn’t really make much sense. Not surprisingly, the film flop was quickly forgotten by audiences.
14. Kalank (2019): A huge budget, big star cast, stunning songs, superb cinematography, great costumes, and the backing of a major production house weren’t able to stop this period romantic drama (bottom left) from being a colossal disaster. Although visually stunning, terrible writing dragged the tedious drama into a dark hole. In terms of expectations, it is the biggest disappointment of her career so far.
13. Student of the Year (2012): The movie (above) will be remembered for introducing Varun Dhawan, Sidharth Malhotra and Alia, but very little else. The story of students quickly turned into a forgettable fare after the initial excitement died down. But it did show that the actress had star potential and kick-started an amazing cinema journey, with her being the most successful of the three newcomers launched.
12. Highway (2014): A film that divided audiences showed the young star had real calibre as an actress. Alia’s second film as a lead saw her play a young woman, who forms an unlikely bond with her kidnapper. She gained multiple Best Actress nominations for the challenging role and showed great screen presence. But as a movie with entertainment or repeat value, for many it fell short and had questionable messaging.
11. Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017): The spiritual sequel to Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (2014) teamed up Alia with Varun Dhawan again, in another marriage set romantic comedy (bottom left). The film attempted to take a deeper dive into other issues like a woman’s right to choose career ahead of marriage. It was a little too fractured and couldn’t match the charm of the first film. But it did do decent business in cinemas and Alia was applauded for her performance.
10. 2 States (2014): The romantic comedy drama based on a best-selling book revolved around two young people who fall in love and overcome challenges generated by their different cultural backgrounds. The actress owns every scene in the relatable drama, which largely connected with audiences, without hitting top gear.
9. Darlings (2022): The actress made her debut as a producer with this dark comedy (above), which had a Netflix streaming site premiere. The story of a young housewife, teaming up with her mother to take revenge on an abusive husband offered audiences something different. It was too stretched out in places, but standout performances and the unique subject made it compelling.
8. Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (2014): The old school romance may have gone
down a tried and tested story troupe of an engaged woman, falling in love with another man, but it had plenty of entertainment value. That was largely due to the crackling chemistry between Alia and Varun Dhawan, along with great music. The tribute to Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge would be a commercial success.
7. Brahmastra: Part One – Shiva (2022): The superhero movie (above) took a long time to make and despite clocking up big box office numbers, it didn’t quite meet up to expectations. Alia played the love interest in the story of a young man, who discovers he has superpowers rooted in ancient tradition and goes on a collision course with dark forces. The stunning special effects helped Hindi cinema cross a new horizon. But the plans for a trilogy seem to have collapsed.
6. Kapoor & Sons (2016): Although this film was very much about two sons in a dysfunctional family, dealing with their own respective issues, the actress provided a perfect counterbalance with her character. She is brilliant in the critically acclaimed film, offering audiences something new, including a standout turn from Fawad Khan as son hiding his homosexuality.
5. Udta Punjab (2016): The versatile actress completely transformed herself for this crime drama (above), which had unconnected stories centred around the themes of drugs. She delivers one of the finest performances of her career as a young labourer, who is physically and sexually abused by gangsters. The brutal, brave, and brilliant performance stood out in an important movie, which also starred Shahid Kapoor, Diljit Dosanjh and Kareena Kapoor Khan.
4. Gully Boy (2019): The musical (above), was about an aspiring rapper from the Mumbai slums, played by Ranveer Singh. But Alia added an extra dramatic layer as his feisty girlfriend and won multiple Best Actress awards. The award-winning movie took her into a new zone and was also selected as India’s entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, but not nominated.
3. Raazi (2018): The cross-border spy drama (above) was a cracking big screen adaptation of Harinder Sikka’s acclaimed 2008 novel Calling Sehmat. The actress took centrestage in the story of a woman who marries a Pakistani military officer and relays information to India, prior to the 1971 war between the two countries. She won multiple Best Actress awards and even generated a popular meme.
2. Dear Zindagi (2016): The coming of age drama (above) may have been nominated for multiple awards, but it perhaps didn’t get the credit it deserved. The story of a young woman who gets a new perspective on life with the help of a psychologist had a lot of relatable moments and an ultimately uplifting message of hope. The fact that a lot of leading men, including Shah Rukh Khan, played supporting roles spoke volumes about Alia’s talent and the film’s important subject matter.
1.Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022): In terms of story, setting, direction, cinematography, taking centrestage and performance, this movie is arguably the finest of Alia’s career. She takes on the title role in the story based on true events of a young woman who is sold into a brothel and rises up to become a powerful figure in the Mumbai underworld. She won multiple Best Actress awards for the Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed drama and showed there isn’t a young star in Hindi cinema who can shine as brightly as her.
The actor’s evolving style from youth to maturity getty images
Aamir Khan embracing vintage looks with classic charmgetty images
Bold and dramatic changes defining Aamir Khan’s careergetty images
From rugged to refined Aamir Khan’s versatile appearancesgetty images
Memorable film moments showcasing Aamir Khan’s unique stylegetty images
Aamir Khan’s blend of classic and contemporary fashiongetty images
Aamir Khan’s dedication to authentic character portrayals getty images
Cinematic milestones reflected in Aamir Khan’s on-screen imagegetty images
A seated Jain enlightened teacherAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Ganesha from JavaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A Chinese silk painting depicting the BuddhaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
ArdhanarishvaraAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Head of a grimacing yakshaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
NagaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
The Bimaran casketAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Hunia Chawla
A still from rehearsal
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5