The Kapoor family is in many ways a Bollywood parallel to the Nehru family at the national level. It occupies the place of Bollywood’s ‘first family’ and it was with Raj Kapoor and RK Films that it came into prominence, although it entered cinema with Prithviraj Kapoor.

Raj Kapoor was also the closest that India had to an ideological hero in the Nehru era. The current scion of the family — Ranbir Kapoor — is gaining in importance as a star but his place cannot be understood independently. Just as Rahul Gandhi cannot be understood without reference to the Nehru family, Ranbir Kapoor owes too much to his khandaan.

Although Raj Kapoor’s films were critical of society and the establishment, he had a privileged position in the film industry by the early 1960s because of his closeness to power. There were other filmmakers in the same period — like Bimal Roy and Ritwik Ghatak — who had exhibited similar concern but were not favoured. Raj Kapoor’s political importance owed as much to his cultivated persona as to his directorial importance when the nation was being constructed in the 1950s. Apart from the social criticism they engage in, his two most important films of the 1940s and 1950s — Barsaat (1949) and Awaara (1951) — are allegories about political reconciliations within the nation: The ethnic minorities with the modern nation in Barsaat, state authority with the nation’s dispossessed children in Awaara. Shree 420 can be interpreted as a diatribe against the wealthy and decadent opponents of Nehruvian modernity. Raj Kapoor was perhaps also being ‘constructive’ while the other filmmakers were merely ‘critical’. He personified the exemplary citizen who aligned himself with state action in an actual political conflict. That Raj Kapoor understood the ideological preoccupations of the state better than any other filmmaker is also underscored by Bobby (1973) which is about the dignity of the small businessman (Premnath) when confronted by a big industrialist (as played by Pran). Mrs Indira Gandhi was then moving against the monopoly houses and wooing small enterprise as part of her populist strategies.

Prithviraj Kapoor’s descendants perhaps represent the most well-connected family in Bollywood and Raj Kapoor’s two brothers both succeeded in different ways in the film industry. His sons all got timely breaks, though only Rishi Kapoor was able to build on it. Although Raj Kapoor cast Rishi Kapoor as the hero of Bobby, Rishi Kapoor did not become an ‘ideological hero’ in his father’s mould and largely played the romantic hero, but ideological rhetoric was on its way out of Hindi cinema after Mrs Gandhi’s first period in office. The point being made here is that if Bollywood has been a fiercely competitive milieu, Prithviraj Kapoor’s descendants on the male line have had a distinct advantage. The purpose of this preamble is to suggest the ‘push’ that Ranbir Kapoor may have received as a star, which is necessary to acknowledge before we evaluate his successes.

Ranbir Kapoor’s first film to attract attention was apparently Ayan Mukerji’s low-budget Wake Up Sid (2009), but his features were already well-known when he appeared in it. A film star’s trajectory is not dependent only on cinema today and many stars — especially those from film-land families — are known through the ads they appear in and the brands they endorse. One is not certain of the financial terms involved but there appears to be a symbiotic relationship here because while the stars sell the brands, their association with the products they sell promotes them equally. This is not only true of film stars but of all celebrities including those in cricket, who remain in the public eye with the help of advertisements.

Wake Up Sid was declared a hit but it is a singularly dull film about a spoiled young man from an affluent family who learns to shoulder his responsibilities. Ranbir Kapoor plays Siddharth Mehra (or ‘Sid’) and one cannot imagine that the film would have been of interest if an unknown newcomer had played the role. What is ‘Sid’ to us that we should care about his life and his education, is the first thought that came into one’s head because the heroine (Konkona Sen Sharma) is not glamorous and the film does not even have romance to enliven it. The only explanation for the film’s success is that the public came for Ranbir Kapoor, who was already a celebrity before he became a film star, and their expectations had been aroused. It is a strange aspect of celebrity culture that we are brought so close to people unknown until yesterday — even close enough to begin caring about them.

Ranbir Kapoor’s next big success Barfi! (2012) was India’s official entry for the Oscars. Barfi! belongs to the kind of cinema which pleads for the inclusion of the disadvantaged within mainstream society. It does this by dealing with the unfulfilled mutual love of a deaf-mute boy and a normal girl and the boy’s dealings with an autistic girl, whom he eventually marries. The film is about an exuberant young man, disadvantaged physically but with ‘irresistible charm’. In order to portray him, the film plagiarises freely from silent cinema, Charlie Chaplin and Mr Bean. It is not necessary to go into the details but the most obvious bit is from Chaplin’s City lights (1931). While plagiarising so extensively from well-known films is not acceptable practice, it is not this aspect as much another one which should leave people hostile and this has to do with the way Barfi is portrayed. In the first place, while Barfi is supposed to be a disadvantaged boy from the poorer classes, he is impeccably attired in designer clothes. He is always fresh, neatly shaved or with a fashionable amount of stubble. The film also takes pains to associate him minimally with his working class father — perhaps because a celebrity must be careful about the company he keeps. The argument here is that when a big actor plays a role of this sort, he should at least submit to it out of humility towards those he is representing. When Ranbir Kapoor impersonates the poor deaf-mute Barfi, the emotion he arouses in us is the one awakened when we learn that the kin of a powerful person has usurped a resource meant for the genuinely disadvantaged. ‘Sympathy’ is perhaps a similarly precious resource and should be extended only to those who deserve it and not to impersonators. Barfi! is intended as a ‘middle film’ but one needs to compare it with a portrayal from genuine middle cinema — Sadhu Meher in Shyam Benegal’s Ankur (1974) — to understand how spurious Barfi! and its protagonist are.

But more importantly from the viewpoint of this article, Ranbir Kapoor tries to mimic Raj Kapoor’s ‘lovable’ antics and there is a deliberate effort to make the deaf-mute Barfi appear more charming than he is — by having his companions adulate him. Raj Kapoor’s heroes are perhaps the only ones in Hindi cinema who are loved more than they love. Since Raj Kapoor was producer-director, the women in his films are required to find him irresistible, and this kind of fascination is also directed towards Ranbir Kapoor as Barfi.

Ranbir Kapoor’s latest hit Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, also directed by Ayan Mukerji, is expected to be one of the top Hindi grossers of all time, but it goes about promoting its star in the same dubious way. The film has roughly the same formula as Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge (1995). The film begins with preparations for a wedding and a flashback taking us back seven years. A group of boisterous students are going off on a trek in Himachal Pradesh and their studious classmate Naina (Deepika Padukone) joins them. The star of the group is Bunny (Ranbir Kapoor) who is adored by everyone. Naina is initially alarmed by Bunny’s ways but she begins to fall in love although he remains playfully indifferent. The friends part company at the end of the trip with Bunny intending to fulfill his ‘dreams’ by becoming a journalist and travelling around the world but they all meet again in 2012 at the wedding. Bunny and Naina now declare their love for each other although there is a brief inter-personal crisis involving their other friends. The dilemma now is whether Bunny can give up his dreams and settle down with Naina and this is what he eventually chooses to do.

There is not much to be said about Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani except that it exhibits the usual ostentation that Bollywood has become known for and everyone outspends everyone else. Especially tasteless and irksome in their lavishness are the wedding preparations at a luxury hotel in Udaipur. Also showcased are the tourist hotspots of Europe, the excuse being Bunty’s ‘dreams’. Bunny wants to be a ‘traveller’ and an international ‘journalist’ but his dreams revolve around the hotspots selected by Thomas Cook or SOTC — like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, New York and Broadway. He is not where the action is (like Syria or Sudan) but only where the tourists are.

The film is a casting coup of sorts because Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone ended their former relationship acrimoniously, with Deepika going on television to talk about him. Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is designed as an onscreen reconciliation between estranged celebrities and the highpoint of the film is some ardent kissing between the two. More pertinent, however, is the strategy to make Bunny the ‘star’ through the fiction in the film. In Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge, Shah Rukh Khan comes across brilliantly because he has natural charisma and not because the fiction in the film turns him into a star — but Shah Rukh is also self-made. In Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, every character in the film behaves as though Bunny is a natural superstar. It is as if the film is providing Bunny with adoration in the story because Ranbir Kapoor may not find it in the theatres. As an instance, although only a guest he appears at the Udaipur wedding as if he were its life and soul — a spectacular entrance complete with cheering audiences and admiring friends.

This is not to suggest that Ranbir Kapoor does not have a genuine following because Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is a huge hit, but we cannot be certain what role the factor of birth plays in a film star’s appeal. Still, we live in a milieu in which the accident of birth amplifies hugely the qualities ascribed to the individual while it takes a long time for the qualities of the self-made person to be acknowledged.

The writer, a film critic and scholar, is the author of Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema (Oxford, 2008)

The rising star

Barfi!: Despite the film plagiarising freely from silent cinema, Charlie Chaplin and Mr Bean, and despite the fact that Ranbir hardly appeared to be poor, he gave a convincing performance as deaf-mute Barfi.

Rockstar: From the innocent Janaradhan to the arrogant Jordon, Ranbir got everything right in a film that had several flaws.

Rocket Singh: Arguably one of the finest films of his career so far, Ranbir played the character of a Sikh salesman. The film bombed at the box office.

Wake Up Sid:In just the third movie of his career, Ranbir proved his versatility with his boy-next-door looks and the chemistry he shared with Konkana Sen Sharma.

Rajneeti: Holding his own against veteran actors like Ajay Devgn, Manoj Bajpyee and Nana Patekar, Ranbir was impressive as Samar Pratap.