What’s Hrithik Roshan presented?

Rightly awestruck by Sonam Kapoor in Ram Madhvanirsquos Neerja 2016mdashthat shersquod delivered nothing close to until then or has sincemdashactor Hrithik Roshan went up to Sonamrsquos dad Anil to figure what had gone into that performance The secret sauce as it wereThatrsquos the first time Hrithik heard of one Vinod Rawat an acting coach employed to assist Sonam for the film Shortly thereafter Hrithikrsquos manager called up Vinod looking to hire him as the superstarrsquos personal acting coach as well Something hersquos been with Hrithik for all his movies since Kaabil 2017mdashSuper 30 Vikram Vedha Fighter etc I first heard of Vinod in his late 30s because of the feature film Pushtaini Ancestral where hersquos debuted as producer director cowriter also acting in it as the lead Hrithik has presented the picture In the sense that hersquos essentially lent his name to itPushtaini however is nothing like bigbudget Bollywood blockbusters Hrithik stars in So from a brandsense this isnrsquot associative for audiences Like say Alfred Hitchcock Presents for mysterythrillers or how Anurag Kashyap presents mainly indie darker sides of the moonHis student Hrithik RoshanThat said I drove up early Tuesday morning for Pushtaini because itrsquos relatively rare for movies to be screened half a week before its theatrical release on a Friday Personal confidence of filmmakers over what theyrsquove made being directly proportional to how early theyrsquore willing to share it with the press And I donrsquot mean here a sideshow for ldquoselect mediardquo in lieu of potentially rigged postsratings In selfperception I figured Vinod isnrsquot deluluPushtaini is a bittersweetmdashinherently light deeply personal mostly gloomy yet wholly entertainingmdashtake on the protagonist Bhupi or Bhupinder Rawat thatrsquos Vinod himself whorsquos moved from Uttarakhand to Bombay to pursue acting as a profession with the screen name Aaryan ShawThis bit is limited to the first few minutes as Pushtainimdashthereafter more or less a road filmmdash hilariously opens with the scene of Vinod amateurishly overacting opposite Rajkummar Rao in a Bollywood productionVinod tells me he studied acting at FTII Pune where Rajkummar who hersquod done theatre with in Delhi was his seniorRajkummar cameos as a character called Ankur Bhatia in the film The name isnrsquot a coincidence Ankur Bhatia is actually one of the leads in the Disney Hotstar series Aarya 2020 where Vinod had directed multiple episodes for Ram MadhvaniThe world of aspiring actorsmdashdonrsquot know why theyrsquore disparagingly termed strugglersmdashthat Vinod captures in Pushtaini he says is from his varied experiences hosting acting workshops in Bombay He was casting director for actingmentor Atul MongiaOf course Vinod himself mustrsquove moved from Delhi to Pune to Bombay to become a screen actor what else ldquoKaathi kadh frame height and other factors didnrsquot match uprdquo he says despite an educational degree from FTII that for media in general counts for precious littleEvidently teaching the artform instead became fulfilling enough for Vinod Which is also what makes Pushtaini interestingmdashto watch a pic purely from the actorrsquos POVRather than fixate over spectaclefrills of which there is none Or the script alone thatmdashalthough laden with a couple of debuttype clicheacutes suicide child sex abusemdashis competent enough to sustain the viewing experience As an instructor of the craft Vinod tells me hersquos at the moment devoted to ldquosensing energiesrdquo Which is hard to explain but he applies it with mixing up the filmrsquos cast with nonprofessional actors ldquoThe bua jiju whorsquos an accountant the niece running after her unclehellip Theyrsquore realrdquoAs for performances itself Vinod says that while he used to obsess with achieving conventional realism once upon a time he finds that boring now ldquoWhatrsquos loud can be exciting whatrsquos subtle could get too slowThere are anyway only two kinds of actingmdashfake makebelievable and nonfake believablerdquoYou can tell Vinod similarly attempts variety throughout Pushtaini I enjoyed how his character fits into the larger film His students must closely dissect his act with a sharper scalpel One of the pupils in a way being HrithikWhich brings me back to what Irsquod been wondering before I called up Vinod What does a fulltime acting coach do for an established actor especially HrithikFor one therersquos already a director on the set Vinod never visits the set Plus achieving peculiarities for a particular part apartmdashitrsquos not like Hrithik superstar for two and half decades must need afterschool extraclasses noAs coach Vinod likens himself to a fellow singermusician for ldquoriyaazrdquorehearsalmdashit helps with the ldquojugalbandirdquo jamming since there are 10 different ways of exploring a scene if you arenrsquot set in your ways that isrdquoThe rule of thumb he goes by he says is how ldquothoughts in a scene must lead to words instead of the other way around We have to understand the core of the act Of course once we do that we have to corrupt it for Hrithik because wersquore working in a commercial setup canrsquot go full realismrdquoAfter his directorial debut Vinod goes back to the corner of the ring for fighter Hrithik in War 2 His own movie obviously is quite different from his mainstream coachingMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper