To compare Shahid Kapoor and Nani in Jersey is unfair to both actors

So which is better? Don’t try answering that trick question. Remakes never stand a chance, no matter how effectively they capture the essence of the original, and God forbid, if the remake tries to tweak the original, you are guilty of unforgivable trespassing.

Director Gowtam Tinnanuri, who has directed both the versions of Jersey in Telugu and Hindi, has stuck to the original blueprint in Hindi, except of course where the cultural conversions are required. Hence Arjun, the fallen cricketer who rises above his destiny so that his son would be proud of him, is relocated from Hyderabad to Chandigarh. His wife is no longer Sarah. She is Vidya, well played by Mrunal Thakur.

But the emotional core of the two films is unchanged. Jersey in Telugu as well as in Hindi is one of the quietest achievers in recent times. It’s a film you want to protect from the blaring blustering behemoths of the box office; the Bahu-bullies of the big screen could well swallow this gentle kind compassionate film.

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The hero here doesn’t jump down a bridge with a flag in hand nor does he gun down his opponents bragging that he hates violence but violence loves him, what to do! Arjun in Jersey hardly talks. He has almost nothing to say to his wife or his son. He has turned his back on a world which worships only the successful.

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The person whom Arjun communicates most with is his cricket coach, a father-like figure played by Shahid Kapoor’s real-life father Pankaj Kapoor. Between them too, there are long stretches of silence punctuated by little gestures of affection, like Arjun touching the coach’s elbow…

At a time when film heroes are shouting from rooftops to make themselves heard Shahid Kapoor must convey his character’s pent-up pain anger and suffering wordlessly. Except when he rushes to the station to scream in unison with a hurtling train, pouring out all his bottled-up rage and hurt in a wave of protest.

And what a job Shahid has done. With this one jor-daar performance lit up with a muted grace and an unspoken tragedy, the actor proves that when it comes to minimalist performances he has no jodi.

It is a performance conveying years of internalized pain and wounds that never healed. There is a sequence towards the end when Arjun has to tell his wife (with whom all communication has collapsed) why he must return to cricket after ten years of exile. All of Anirudh Ravichander’s gently persuasive background score seizes, as Shahid’s Arjun just vents for the first time in front of his wife. It’s a remarkably quiet outburst denuded of all unnecessary sound and fury, retaining just the core of hurt. It is the most mellow and mature meltdown I’ve seen in an Indian film in recent times.

Jersey also has Shahid Kapoor doing what I’ve seen only one Indian actor do before: emote with the face turned away from the camera. In Shekhar Kapoor’s Masoom, Shabana Azmi had a meltdown moment when she buries her head in a cupboard. We see only the back of her head. But we know exactly what she is feeling.

In (New) Jersey, Arjun asks his son Kittu (played by the bright eager Ronit Kamra who also played Nani’s son in the original) why he didn’t tell his mother that Arjun has slapped him. “She would never believe that you would hit me,” the little boy answers.

Shahid turns his face away. All we see is his shoulders wracking. I have never seen a more moving screen moment between father and son in any film except maybe in Uberto Pasolini’s _Nowhere Specia_l.

So is Shahid “better” than Nani from the original? It’s a question that is insulting to both the actors who have given all of themselves to the role of a father who must redeem himself before it’s too late. Only in this country do we talk of one actor doing “better” than another in the same role. Have you heard of anyone comparing Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn in the stage and screen versions of _My Fair Lady_, respectively?

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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