Retake | Double roles and inclusivity through the other

Of the most exploited tropes in Hindi cinema, the double role is perhaps the most journeyed. But its application, probably says more than just the doubling up of star power.

In Amar Jeet’s _Hum Don_o (1961) Major Verma requests Anand to take his place in life one last time. A visibly dejected and defenceless Verma, who has also been handicapped by war, wishes for Anand to continue playing the role that has kept his wife, and family somewhat sane in the period that he has been missing. How? Anand is the lookalike of Verma. The double role has featured countless times in Hindi cinema and is probably as old as some of our earliest films. From drama to comedy through thrillers, the double role has anchored countless stories but while the economy of casting an actor twice has been regarded as the source of its inspiration by most it is really the elusive fluidity of life that the double role most entertainingly captures. The frugality of individuality, for once, is sacrificed for the abundance of the alternate. Why can’t we be this, but this as well?

One of the most iconic, and meme-worthy scenes to ever come out of the multiverse of double roles is Gopi Kishan ’s ‘mere do do baap’. It’s a delightfully pulpy sequence, punctuated by a Govinda-like nosy innocence of the 90s. But what this particular film also represents is the impermanent nature of inadequacy. Both Gopi and Kishan are alike, but they are opposites in terms of character. While rebirth might often second chances, the double role offers altering perspectives on life. The same is true for Sridevi ’s Chaalbaaz , Amitabh Bachchan ’s Don , Hema Malini ’s Seeta aur Geeta and many others. Morality and character aren’t black and white monoliths that we identify with the assistance of visual language – aka face and body. But it is the fluid spectrum within it where we inhabit certain types and versions of ourselves through life. They can at times, even be the opposite of our previous selves.

Of course, reality doesn’t allow for circus-like elasticity to play both magician and joker, thief and police, but what cinema does by embodying these extremes is to make the membrane connecting the two, inhabitable. The double role doesn’t spell duality as much as it earmarks the spectrum within which all morality interchanges as part and parcel of life. It’s where the conceptual flourishes of the double role have been applied best. Through our cinema’s frugality, more so its tendency to wear its obscurities on the forehead like a scarf.

There is, of course, a cynical reason for why the double role has always been popular. It’s part hedonistic conquest to deliver artistic range. But it has also been seen as a qualifier of star power. In an interview after Hum Dono, Dev Anand claimed that only the lucky ones were offered double roles in Hindi cinema. For it meant watching an actor occupy pretty much the entirety of the runtime. Only the truly loved and worshipped could then a fill a void where one wasn’t present, as much as it was intentionally created. It’s godly, in some sense of the word. To be allowed that cinematic omnipresence, matched only by the camera that watches everything. It’s probably why Amitabh Bachchan has played double roles in films that number in double digits – too many to even recall.

But while bureaucratic filmmaking is one aspect of this idea that Hindi cinema has regularly returned to, it’s the inherent cheekiness of ‘another side’ that allows storytellers to challenge the destiny of being. In Chaalbaaz, for example, a more street-smart Sridevi assists her innocent little twin to avenge a death in the family. We can only really be helped by ourselves, the film seems to say. And so to double up on the weakness of one, there is the bullish heroism of another. It’s a balancing act, rarely available to us mortals who go to sleep every night thinking, what if I wasn’t who I am. It’s always the other version of you that you root for in these films, which is why one accepts the second for the sake of the former. Fire and water, together.

Present-day cinema simply wouldn’t allow for the indulgences that Hindi cinema has been built upon. A recent John Abraham film had a triple role that was ridiculed for its preposterousness. But there was a time when we loved the idea of watching an actor in more than one role. Part of it is down to the sheer cinematic presence of actors from an older age. Part of it is down to our ability, historically, to have committed to looking in cinema, for magic. For the tendency to indulge cinema’s primal instincts for the catharsis it provided us in return. Double roles, as silly as they may sound today, were at one point an illustration of the fact that character, in fact, existed as a flux, as a sum of many parts and not just the one we are today, in this moment. It was perhaps the first step towards displaying inclusivity without maybe even knowing it.

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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