Almost everything that Ajay Devgn has done in his career of over 30 years can be traced back to his screen entry from his debut Phool Aur Kaante. A man entering a college, flying kisses, basking in attention, preforming a split while balancing between two motorcycles.
It is a moment cemented in pop culture, being spoofed multiple times by the actor himself. While it is an amusing action piece, if one were to zoom in from an intellectual lens, his filmography comes alive. Ajay Devgn has been balancing his stardom and acting, courage and comfort since 1991. Bollywood, in that sense, has been his college, and he is enjoying the attention. But has he always been successful?
It is a question which first demands the word success to be defined in the context of Ajay Devgn. Through the years, the actor has earned the image of a credible performer. His intense eyes and brooding looks, coupled with his discomfort with media gaze and guarded privacy has added to his enigma. For many, he is charming because he is quiet, he is intelligent because he knows when to speak, wise for he knows where to stop.
It is not a curated personality, as anyone who has followed the Hindi industry even at a cursory level, would know. He is a man who does his job, then moves on the next. He dances, but only in films, he screams but exclusively on screen, he shows off his technical knowledge in the movies he mounts and not the seminars he attends. It isn’t that those who do what Ajay doesn’t makes them frivolous, but it has definitely aided Ajay in a way to very clearly distinguish himself from his contemporaries–Akshay Kumar and the three Khans, Aamir, Shah Rukh and Salman.
Films of the three Khans have, for the longest, arrived with the promise of offering a big scale community viewing experience, while Akshay Kumar’s have been a reflection of his phase– from action, comedy, drama to nationalistic space. An Ajay Devgn film, however, has always been a different breed. His image hasn’t been of a star who smashes box office but of an actor who can ace any role. Of someone who does big films, but doesn’t believe in sticking to a formula. What that leads to is a situation habitable for an actor, but perhaps detrimental to a star.
An Ajay Devgn film can be good, bad or terrible, hit or flop, thrilling or boring, but an Ajay Devgn performance is almost always guaranteed. Not to say that he hasn’t had major box office success, in fact over the last two decades, especially, he has had a healthy stream of superhit films and super acclaimed performances. His rise becomes more precious when one looks back how he started in the early 90s, with desi action dramas. Others had Switzerland, he had hinterland, which is where Ajay started cultivating a loyal audience base so strong and deep that gave him legs to experiment.
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Unlike Suniel Shetty and Sunny Deol, who also dominated the non-metro audiences at the same time, Ajay Devgn started transitioning more smoothly with just the right collaborations coming his way. The bridge between single screens, premium screens and then multiplexes started building in the late 90s when he starred in films like Ishq, Major Saab, Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha, Zakhm and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Times were changing, and Ajay was with it.
Since the big boost to his career starting 1997, Devgn’s most laudable effort has been to never settle. His filmography has been schizophrenic, making it harder to find a pattern for it jumps genres, makers, and even scale. He can be a Rohit Shetty cop and a Ram Gopal Varma gangster; he can be Vishal Bhardwaj’s Othello and Om Raut’s 17th-century warrior Tanaji Malusare; he can be Rajkumar Santoshi Bhagat Singh or his own, Bholaa. The range is enviable and the collaborations diverse– for every Rohit Shetty, Anees Bazmee, there is a Mani Ratnam, Vishal Bhardwaj; for every Indra Kumar, Sajid Khan and Milan Luthria, a Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Prakash Jha and Rituparno Ghosh.
Ajay Devgn perhaps doesn’t get as much credit as he should–and maybe there is a reason for that, explained later–for consistently going against the norms and doing what his heart is in, even if it is a project that defies market conditions. His latest horror thriller Shaitaan is a classic example.
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Announced last year, the film ideally had no reason to exist at a time when trade demanded big stars to do only bigger films and more action to set the box office in motion. A horror genre is historically an under performer, for it alienates a large family audience. It can rarely set the cash registers ringing and yet, it was greenlit and headlined. The box office result of the film for the weekend is out and Shaitaan has surprised the trade, going way past the expectations by lodging solid numbers.
Even if the critics reviews were mixed and the audience reception better than that, Shaitaan displays that Ajay Devgn’s pull in mass belts is strong enough even today to override an average perception. He suffers from the problem of plenty, as film after film (and all varied at that), he gets full marks for intent, but his risk-taking abilities take a huge beating when it is not backed by a good result always.
A crucial component of Aamir Khan’s public image has been the tag which he has earned over the years– perfectionist. His “risks” have come with the assurance of not just a good Aamir Khan performance, but also a good film. That faith of backing his words with his vision sets Aamir apart from even his contemporaries. But Ajay’s experiments have been inconsistent, even if well intentioned.
Post pandemic, the actor has had six full-fledged releases, but except for one, Drishyam 2, none fired the way they should have. A haphazardly made war drama Bhuj: The Pride of India blew up when it released on streaming, the ambitious aerial thriller Runway 34 crashed in the second half, Bholaa emerged as a sloppy remake and one can’t even remember his outing as Chitragupt in the Diwali release Thank God.
Ajay Devgn’s ability to experiment still rides high and Shaitaan is an extension of that. The film’s encouraging trend at the box office should led to the actor re-examining his script choices. He has cultivated a loyal audience base which show up for his outings, even for a genre like horror. But the element which is clearly lacking is consistent ‘perfection’, which helped him become an actor comfortable to navigate different worlds and to become a star with a distinct moviemaking voice. Because when half-baked experiments are done in a dozen, they aren’t novel but simply trial and error. And history is proof, that Ajay Devgn can balance better.
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