By Surendra Bhatia
The AamirIn Hollywood
There’s something about Leonardo DiCaprio that is quite familiar: his vertically challenged frame? Yes, of course. His baby face that earned him his stardom? Possibly. His choice of films – eclectic and hardly ever riding the tried and tested path? That too.And the fact that he is known not just by his films but the choice of his films? Totally. That is such a giveaway.
But first about Leonardo. He’s possibly the only major Hollywood lead star to stay away from franchise films and superhero Marvel kind of capers. He’s not done any of those huge-budget projects like Iron Man or Batman nor has he been a part of any Lord Of The Rings long-running epics; his catalogue of films is astoundingly different, considered almost never as potential blockbusters. Even subject-wise, his projects start off as difficult projects to finance, as films that would be difficult to sell to audiences. But because it is Leonardo fronting them, money still flows in droves and the projects begin to get looked at more seriously. The legend that Leonardo has slowly built up is that a film must be worth a watch solely because he has thought it fit to make it.
That’s an awesome brand equity to build up, without much help from standard Hollywood blockbusters. Tom Cruise would be a lesser hero, but for the Mission: Impossible series; Robert Downey, Jr. is inseparable from Iron Man,and is expected to have a tough time finding his feet again, now that the series has ended; the same is the case with most other lead stars in Hollywood, piggy-backing on capers that can’t fail. Leonardo stands alone, as a star who does his own thing and gets appreciated and applauded for it, and still has an enviable track record at the box-office.
Now, finally, familiar?
Leonardo DiCaprio is the Aamir Khan of Hollywood, just as Aamir used to be the Tom Hanks of Bollywood, years back till Hanks grew old and Aamir stayed as young as a college student. Knowingly or unknowingly, career paths of Leonardo and Aamir show parallels, not in specific films but in the passion and excellence they bring to their craft and films. Both have done films that were considered risky projects on the drawing board but by pouring passion and excellence into them, they converted them into laudable and likeable movies. It hasn’t been easy for either of them but the music playing in their heads compels them to eschew the common and aim for the unusual, and it has worked superbly for both. And this has also helped them stand apart from the rest. It is said that each new film is a test for a star, and that holds true for Leonardo and Aamir too; however, the test the two of them face on release of their new films is not box-office but whether it is interesting and novel and gasp-worthy as expected from them. In fact, neither probably can anymore do the ordinary film; it would, perhaps, be rejected by the masses. Their USP is, they offer films to look forward to, not canned entertainment like the franchise films. As any die-hard cinema fan would pray, more power to them.
