Prithviraj Teaser: Massive Age Gape Between The Lead Couple Stares At Us
In times when actors like Neena Gupta, Vidya Balan and Kareena Kapoor are breaking stereotypes around marriage, motherhood and age in the film industry, Prithviraj sticks out like a sore thumb.
Prithviraj Teaser: The teaser of Akshay Kumar-starrer Prithviraj was released on November 15. This period drama will be a Bollywood launch vehicle for Miss World 2017 Manushi Chhillar. In the film, we will see Kumar essay the role of warrior king Prithviraj Chauhan, while Chillar will essay the role of Princess Samyukta. While we have all grown up hearing the romantic tale of Prithviraj and Samyukta, what glares at us from its film adaptation is the massive age gap between the lead couple.
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Kumar is 54, while the debutant actor starring opposite him, Manushi Chhillar is 24. To put it another way, Chhillar was born six years after Kumar made his debut with the 1991 film Saugandh. This makes Prithviraj one of the many recent Hindi films where an ageing superstar starred opposite a leading lady (almost) half his age, or more, as in this case. While the age gap doesn't seem visible thanks to Kumar's fitness level and maybe makeup, we need to talk about how short the shelf life of a female lead actor is in Bollywood, while her male counterparts can pretend to be young men on the silver screen for an entire lifetime of a newbie heroine.
Written and directed by Dr Chandraprakash Dwivedi, this Yash Raj production also features Sonu Sood and Sanjay Dutt in key roles.
The age gap in romantic relationships is a matter of choice, there is nothing wrong with it. But the way Bollywood plays on the age gap between male and female actors on the silver screen is deeply sexist. We see 50 something actors play roles of young men (it is said that Prithviraj was in his 20s at the time of his death) while a woman actor in her 40s is replaced by a younger woman in the remake of an item number that she starred in the 90s. The film I am talking about is Sooryavanshi, also starring Kumar, in which Raveena Tandon's iconic number Tip Tip was remastered and picturised on Katrina Kaif.
The trend of older men working alongside younger heroines is not new to Bollywood. This year itself, we saw Salman Khan (55 years old) star opposite 29-year-old Disha Patani in Radhe. In 2019, Khan featured in the film Dabangg 3, which marked the debut of Saiee Manjrekar, who was 21.
Is there a dearth of younger actors in Bollywood, who could do justice to the character of Prithviraj? If Kumar can play this role in his 50s then why wasn't the role of Samyukta handed to an older female actor who might have looked compatible with the male lead? Is the audience open to seeing an older female actor cast in the role of a younger woman and then paired opposite a much younger male star?
In times when actors like Neena Gupta, Vidya Balan and Kareena Kapoor are breaking stereotypes around marriage, motherhood and age in the film industry, Prithviraj sticks out like a sore thumb reminding us that it will take much longer for Bollywood, and its audience, to embrace change fully.
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