One of the finest and suave artists in the Indian Cinema Amol Palekar has completed more than 50 years in the Industry. He has contributed in the parallel cinema by giving full of life and memorable performances. During 1970s and 1980s parallel cinema gave chances to newcomer artists who had shown their dazzling performances and took the non-commercial cinema towards a new ray of hope.
Although Amol Palekar is not a mainstream actor, his movies have always been appreciated by audiences. He has always been the part of realistic (New Indian Cinema) where the theme revolves around the life and struggle of a common man. His movies reflected the changing middle-class culture where director plot the scene on middle class lives that attract the Indian audiences towards his Middle class vibrant comedies. Palekar’s simple acting on the large screen leaves a positive impact on the minds of people.
Palekar’s movies depict the simple yet realistic life of a viewer. His natural full of life acting on the big screen always makes the audience to see themselves as the character of the respective story. This is the reason that he is accepted as a middle class lovable jovial common man on streets. His popularity is because of not larger than life presentation on screen and above all for the first time a hero would travel by a bus or a local train.
His soft comedies like “Golmaal”, “Baaton baton mein”, “Chitchor”, “Chhoti si baat”, “Rajnigandha”; with “Gharonda”, “Bhumika”, “Agar” where he has played a negative role and got full appreciation.
As a filmmaker also, he has grappled with different shades of sexuality and questions the labels that society has put on man-woman relationship.
As an actor, he did justice to his job and has carved a niche in the contemporary form of cinema. As a director also, his remarkable contribution showed new paths and open new hopes, aspirations and add optimism for coming generations to explore better and new ideologies of human relations.
Manmeet Kaur
DME, Media School