The Invention of The Angry Young Man

In a recent interview with an Indian news channel, Javed Akhtar was quite candid that Amitabh Bachchan was not even the last choice for the lead role in Zanjeer. Therefore, to credit 'Zanjeer' with creating the Angry Young Man Image of Bachchan is a little far-fetched.

So how and when did the angry young man formulation come about? For a cinematic phenomenon to have a definitive beginning, the film must have passed muster over a few markers, such as recall, longevity, and some box office success.

Amitabh Bachchan was launched by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas in 'Saat Hindustani', but none of his subsequent films registered with the Indian audience that was used to more chubby and chocolaty romantic heroes and their stylized performances. 

The tall, gaunt, thin Amitabh with an intimidating baritone and an awkward gait hardly inspired the confidence that say, a Dev Anand, Rajendra Jubilee Kumar or the new heartthrob Rajesh Khanna did.

No film except 'Anand'

'Anand' was garrulous, funny, impish, quick to make friends out of rank strangers, and formed instant bonds with other endearing characters in the film. Hrishikesh Mukherjee used this to deflect the audience from the impending tragedy and reveal to turn the emotional graph a full 180 degrees as he chose. 

Except for Dr Bhaskar, played by Bachchan, who, unlike the others, was constantly aware of the fragility of Anand's existence. Dr Bhaskar is the alter ego to Anand -- reticent, shy, reserved, an introvert with only a handful of dialogues in the whole film; his entire persona is used to offset Anand's effervescence and keep the audience hooked to the plot, whose end was inevitably tragic. 

Yet, in Dr Bhaskar, we saw a man seething with anger at his helplessness as a doctor against the 'Lymhocarcoma of the Intestine', watching life ebb away from his friend.

Anand lay dead in Dr Bhaskar Bannerjee's home surrounded by a bunch of people he had endeared as his own even as he had chosen an end away from his family, of which there is little mention in the film, and his love interest, which finds a very fleeting reference. 

As Hrishikesh Mukherjee gave the command to roll sound and called action, Amitabh entered the room and broke down at his friend's bedside in the manner typically seen in commercial Indian tear-jerkers. He had practised the sequence throughout the night, referencing many death sequences of protagonists in Indian films.

"Cut... cut... cut... cut..." Hrishida called out. Everything came to a halt. Hrishida called for a small break. This was nothing that he wanted. 

"I have rehearsed the sequence and thought about it all of last night, Hrishida," the young actor proffered.

"Son, you have thought about this sequence all of last night. I have been constructing this sequence in my head for over two decades. Now reimagine the sequence, not as a grieving Dr Bhaskar but a very, very angry Dr Bhaskar, whose seething intensity through the narrative of the film boils over here. He is not breaking down; he is exploding with rage, shattering the silence that has descended on his chatterbox friend. Give that silence a finality, Amit..."

The death sequence and the editorial allegory of Anand coming alive over his tape-recorded theatrical message silencing the raging Amitabh Bachchan and his calibrated breakdown, the end of the tape and the silence, is the stuff of legends for generations of filmmakers. 

This was the definitive birth of the angry young man, a cinematic template created around a gawky young nonstar that would come to subsequently define the Indian hero in the coming decades. 

'Zanjeer' was the bigger commercial hit with this youngster in the lead that used the angst of the character earlier seen in 'Anand' playing off against an unyielding, corrupt and exploitative system, cancer, that became the formula over the next decade. Subsequent filmmakers would polish and enlarge the cinematic canvass exponentially, and that youngster would ride the wave to be hailed as the 'star of the millennium' in the coming years.

The author is a writer and content producer who has served in senior positions across various national broadcast platforms.

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• Amitabh Bachchan
• Anand
• Angry Young Man
• Bollywood
• Zanjeer