“There was a tsunami called Mr Amitabh Bachchan…”: Manoj Bajpayee attributes paradigm shift in cinema to Big B

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], March 2 (ANI): Actor Manoj Bajpayee, who is set to appear in the upcoming family drama ‘Gulmohar, said that the paradigm shift from realistic cinema that the Bollywood witnessed was due to the “tsunami” called Amitabh Bachchan.

In a recent interview with ANI, while discussing the realism that used to exist in films like ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro’, Manoj stated that this genre of movies suddenly hit a roadbloack due to Amitabh Bachchan.

He said, “There was a tsunami called Mr Amitabh Bachchan who became an aspiration fo each and every person. He became the representative of anger which was prevalent in the society. So it was difficult for anyone to stand in front of Amitabh Bachchan ji and his cinema.”

Manoj continued, “The way he (Amitabh) was representing anger and his persona, the whole population was able to relate with it or they were observing him while thinking that this what we want to become. At that time, parallel cinema in a small way was still trying to register its presence.”

Speaking further about the veteran megastar, it was discussed that there was a time when roles in films like ‘Coolie’, ‘Kaala Patthar’, ‘Deewaar’, ‘Trishul’ and others were being written while keeping Amitabh in mind; however, this never seemed to be the case with Bajpayee’s filmography.

Weighing in on this, the actor said, “For us, what happened was that there were some very young filmmakers like Ram Gopal Varma and later on Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and so many other names. They were finding actors for their films and we were those actors as we all came in the same time. So somewhere we all empowered each other.”

With a one-minute cameo in Drohkaal (1994) and a small part as a dacoit in Shekhar Kapur’s ‘Bandit Queen’, Bajpayee got a breakthrough role of criminal Bhiku Mhatre in Ram Gopal Varma’s crime film ‘Satya’ in 1998.

‘Satya’ will remain special in Manoj’s career as he received a National Award as Best Supporting Actor for his amazing performance in the film. The film was helmed and produced by Ram Gopal Varma back in 1998.

The movie also starred Urmila Matondkar, Shefali Shah, Govind Namdev and Saurabh Shukla and introduced JD Chakravarthy as a small-town boy who arrives in Mumbai and gradually gets trapped into the world of crime.