Here’s looking at you, Ranveer Singh

THERE’S a scene in the ‘Dhurandhar’ prequel where Sara Arjun’s Yalina sees Ranveer Singh’s Hamza for the first time. Hamza is just hanging about her tent, in an oxblood Pathani kurta and Patiala salwar. He wears sunglasses and has his wild mane open and flowing. Yalina cannot stop staring at this object of beauty. The camera further pans Hamza, objectifying his hardy masculinity. Her mother reprimands her and asks her to get on a stage. Hamza, the soft-tough warrior, offers a cop out.

The woman’s gaze is new to Hamza. But it is what actor Ranveer Singh has built his career on.

There’s more. A shootout where one of Rehman Dakait’s sons is killed, and Hamza ends up saving the other son. His hairstyle through this nervous, brutal scene is like a Head & Shoulders commercial. Women have compared it to a lion’s mane, or perhaps that of an equine. Hamza’s layered hair swirls like a fan, devoid of dust or grime, bullets or blood. It sashays past his shoulders and then back and then his waist. The women in the movie theatre I am at, mostly in their 60s as it’s a morning show, have lost it. They shift in their seats uncomfortably.

In another scene, Hamza has just arrived in Lyari in the dead of the night. A group of men collect around him, pull his pants down, and pin him to the ground. You can see the fear in Hamza’s eyes as he readies himself for the inevitable, only to be saved by a passing police van.

In ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’, the sequel, Hamza takes the seat of Lyari. It is a worn out classic leather wingback. He is shirtless, for no reason whatsoever. His hirsute chest does the job of what his wild hairstyle did in the prequel – drive the audience into delirium.

I am not being facetious. Of course there is more to the actor than his bare chest, his blinding wardrobe, his billowing half-manbun. But Singh’s physicality – his soft masculinity – has always been his money shot. His Bittu in his excellent debut ‘Band Baaja Baraat’ is dealing with friendzoning when his girlfriend chooses her career over his love. In ‘Lootera’, he is poetic as a lovelorn suffering artist. In Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s finest three films – ‘Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela’, ‘Bajirao Mastani’, ‘Padmavat’, he plays the lead roles with more mischief, malleability and manliness than we have ever seen in a male lead. In ‘Gully Boy’ he is the devastated/devastating underdog rapper. In ‘83’, he is more Kapil Dev than all-rounder himself. His Rocky in ‘Rocky Rani Kii Prem Kahaani’ is the whole film.

Show me another guy with as much range, and I’ll show you a goose egg. In each of these films, I have read at least one review that says this film was his “career-best”, and yet, Ranveer betters himself in the next film. In each of these films, audiences young and old, male and female, have walked out singing hosannas to Ranveer.

But the two Dhurandhars bother me the most. The films are bearing the brunt of what a political film should be: scrutiny for putting fact and fiction in a blender, outrage for representing one political party’s voice and demonising the other’s efforts, and something called ‘peak detailing’ which I googled to discover is just a social-media meme.

In all this chaos and cacophony, the one who has been drowned out has been Ranveer, his masterly performance. His extraordinary range as a young and patriotic Jaskirat to a blood-thirsty brother to the trigger-happy secret agent Hamza – all of which Ranveer executes to perfection, all in one film. This, while looking like a dish to be devoured himself. In a film that’s all about over-the-top, chest-thumping nationalism, Ranveer brings restraint.

Here is a snippet of what I had written about Ranveer Singh in an older column, and I echo today: “Singh is truly a socio-cultural study of what it means to be a young actor cracking it big in the world’s biggest film industry. He came in as a rank newcomer, without a famous last name or a godfather, and landed right on top of the pile with one of the most illustrious production houses, Yash Raj Films, backing him. With only a couple of film releases, he became YRF’s golden goose. He turned Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bhansali Productions and Zoya Akhtar’s Tiger Baby into major production houses by churning out blockbusters. Singh had become bigger than Bollywood itself.”

Here’s looking at you Ranveer. Ogling and applauding.