Filmfare recommends: A list of arthouse films of Ajay Devgn on his birthday

In his debut film Phool Aur Kaante (1991) Ajay Devgn made the now-famous entry by doing a split across two bikes. That kind of sums up his career for you. He has always been associated with extravagant films and OTT characters. Masala entertainment is his forte and he’s okay with it. Thanks to his mass appeal, he has given a tough competition to the three Khans and is considered a superstar in his own right. But every actor feels the need to experiment time and again. There came a phase in his career where he chose to work with a different set of directors rather than those he was comfortable with in order to push the envelope. On the occasion of his birthday, we offer a list of six such films which will acquaint you with a different side of Ajay Devgn.

Zakhm (1998)

Directed by Mahesh Bhatt, Zakhm carried shades of Mahesh’s own life. The film won the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration. Ajay plays a music director whose mother (Pooja Bhatt) was a Muslim but chose to live as a Hindu after marrying a Hindu man. He learns her secret as a child but respects her wishes. Years later, she’s burnt by fundamentalists in a riot and succumbs to the injuries. Ironically, her younger son (Akshay Anand) is a fundamentalist himself and is against communal harmony. When he learns the truth about his mother, he decides to stand by his brother and fulfil their mother’s wish of being buried with Muslim rites. It was a poignant film depicting real-life concerns. Made against the backdrop of Mumbai bombings, it did ask some pertinent questions indeed and preached peace and goodwill. Ajay gave a restrained performance as the elder brother who has to make his volatile sibling see the light of the day. 

Thakshak (1999)

The film has been touted as Govind Nihalani’s attempt to marry art with mart. The film’s title alluded to the story about king Takshak from the Mahabharata. Moving away from his usual suspects like Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah, Niahalani chose to work with Ajay Devgn and Rahul Bose. Both play second-generation dons Ishaan and Sunny who are part of the builder mafia. While Devgn is restrained, Bose is a power-hungry guy with a violent streak. After a girl (Tabu) enters his life, Ishaan begins to question his choices. A silent rage engulfs his heart. He begins to see the corruption which has made inroads into every corner of the society. He realises he’s part of the problem and wants to leave the family business. However, this epiphany leads to more violence as Sunny begins to lose it big time and the only way to stop him is by killing him. While the film didn’t perform well commercially, Ajay’s performance as a repenting criminal came in for a lot of praise.

Dil Kya Kare (1999)

Prakash Jha directed this morally ambiguous romance starring Ajay, Kajol and Mahima Chaudhary. Ajay saves Kajol from being molested while they are both travelling in a train and then they end up having a one-night stand. She gets pregnant and has to give up the child for adoption because of societal norms. Years later, she pops back in Ajay’s life when she learns that Ajay and his wife have coincidentally adopted her daughter. She pines to be with the child and sort of becomes the girl’s nanny. All hell breaks loose when Mahima Chaudhary, who plays the wife, learns of the affair. Kajol wants her daughter back and many melodramatic moments later decides to leave the family in peace. The film ends with Ajay saying a silent goodbye to her at the railway station. The film wasn’t clear on what stance it wanted to adopt. It was sympathetic to both women. Ajay played a man caught between his past and present and wanting to do good by both. He did give his best despite the see-saw storyline. 

Gangaajal (2003)

His second outing with Prakash Jha was a much better film. Ajay plays an idealistic police officer Amit Kumar posted in the crime-ridden West Champaran district of Bihar. He gets to know that the system is rotten to the core at every turn and tries his hardest to reform the police force under him. While the men admire his honesty and integrity, they laugh at his naivete behind his back. There’s a strong police-mafia nexus in the area and Amit warns his men to desist consorting with the criminals. Enraged by the constant pressure put on them by the corrupt politicians, a section of officers belonging to Amit’s command pour battery acid in the eyes of some goons. This act of vigilante justice is soon mimicked across the state by other policemen as they vent out years of suppression. While the crime rate does take a drop as criminals go into hiding, Amit warns that such practices will lead to a state of anarchy but despite his best intentions the tragedy plays itself out. 

Raincoat (2004)

An adaptation of the story The Gift of the Magi (1906) by O. Henry, this film was directed by the acclaimed Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh and starred Ajay Devgn and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Shot primarily in a one-room set-up, the film is all about a chance meeting of former lovers who pretend to be more prosperous than they actually are in order to make each other happy. It’s basically a set of conversations between two people intercut with a series of flashbacks and ends in a bitter-sweet way as both try to do good for the other. It was unlike any other film both Ajay and Aishwarya had done so far. They had looked good together in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) and carried forward their chemistry. Ajay showed that he doesn’t need a gun or a charged-up setting to showcase histrionics. That he can emote in a simple, dialogue-oriented film as well. 

Omkara (2006)

At the beginning of his career, if someone had told Ajay that 15 years down the line he would be acting in a Shakespeare adaptation, he would have laughed it all off as a joke. It took a Vishal Bhardwaj to visualise him as Othello. Set in the badlands of North India, the film plays out the tragic tale of Iago/Langda Tyagi’s (Saif Ali Khan) betrayal. Tyagi feels he’s been ignored and slighted by his friend because of his handicap and wants revenge. He plots to bring him down by sowing seeds of discontent. Omi/ Othello begins to suspect his wife Dolly/Desdemona (Kareena Kapoor Khan) of infidelity and in a fit of rage kills her. Tyagi, the perpetrator behind all this too is killed by his own wife while Omi commits suicide in remorse. Only Keshu/ Cassius (Vivek Oberoi) is left alive in the end, looking at it all with muted grief. Ajay brought forth both the ruthlessness and the vulnerability of Othello through his power-packed performance and made the viewers root for his character. One can see the pain and the agony amply reflected in his eyes during the tragic climax. He also perfected the use of Khariboli dialect to bring a level of authenticity to his character.




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