For most of you who have seen Govind Nihlani’s Drohkaal, forgetting the performance of Ashish Vidyarthi as ‘Bhadra’ is just impossible. Such was the intensity of his performance in the film that it fetched him a National Award in the Best Supporting Actor category and made him stand out, despite the presence of two other stalwarts (Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah) in the film. But of late, Ashish Vidyarthi has vanished off the commercial Bollywood circuit. Why do you think we don’t see much of this very talented actor nowadays in Hindi films?
If we wind our clocks back, say 30-40 years, there was a good guy and a bad guy in our films. This is the concept that made us take notice of the acting prowess of actors like Pran, Premnath, Prem Chopra, Ajit, Amjad Khan, Amrish Puri and many other bad guys whom we to date cherish with their screen names. If it was not for them, who would remember Gabbar, Mogambo or Teja?
But for the past twenty years, if we look at Hindi films, the concept of ‘hero-villain’ has been slowly on the decline. Either the bad guy is played by our Hero himself or there is no bad guy in today’s films. When was the last time you saw a good guy and bad guy clash in Hindi films before ‘Dabanng’? Very tough to remember a credible character that was written for a villain of late.
But one industry’s loss has been the gain of several others’ down South. For the past 11 years Ashish Vidyarthi has been busy with his South movies, and in fact he’s had the opportunity to work with nearly all the super stars down South and has been a quintessential part of several blockbuster hits.
According to Ashish’s PR, Molecule Communications, Ashish Vidyarthi is more intent at doing roles that will bring out more variations in him than what we already recognize him for. Though we got to see him in the critically acclaimed ‘Red Alert’ last year, it was not a commercial success and very few people did witness the talent of this man on-screen. Come next year, we will be privileged to see Ashish in the Ranbir Kapoor starrer ‘Barfi’.
Hope Bollywood can come out with some interesting characters for this hugely talented actor before they lose it all out to the South and other languages!