Machismo isn’t the first attribute that comes to mind when we think of the heroes in director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s films, but it should be. Sure, his heroes are often reduced to tears, but if you think about it, any softness they display is counterbalanced by muscles and rage. While Bhansali writes strong women characters and shines a spotlight on their stories, at the heart of his films is almost always a man who is broken by circumstance and anguished by the world around him. From Khamoshi (1996) to Padmaavat (2018), the poster of a Bhansali film may give the heroine pride of place, but ultimately, the story is really that of a man whom society tries to break, and who has the conviction in his beliefs to withstand social pressures.
Over the years, just as the women in Bhansali’s films have become stronger and more belligerent, so have the men. The heroes have become more obviously macho, reflecting the muscularity (physical and psychological) and hardened stances that we’ve seen in real-life social attitudes. The masculinity of Bhansali’s heroes is traditional in most ways, but seems radically different because his men are not threatened by women. They’re not insecure about sharing either the spotlight or power. However, for all the space that they’re willing to give women, a Bhansali hero is almost always rooted in masculine pride and aggression, with beauty and male tears as accessories. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, Bhansali makes machismo look good. Here are our favourite heroes from the Bhansaliverse, ranked from least to most macho.
Vanraj and Sameer in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam
Chaste, tender and the first of Bhansali’s grand opuses, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) remains unusual because it’s a love triangle that flattens into a straight line — and none of us minded. As Sameer and Vanraj, Bhansali cast two actors known for their ability to do action — Ajay Devgn and Salman Khan — and made them sit down with their emotions. Khan reprised the role of a happy-go-lucky composer that we saw him play in Khamoshi. Once again he goes up against a strong, silent type. However, Devgn’s Vanraj is very different from Nana Patekar’s character in Bhansali’s first film. The stoic Vanraj has none of Patekar’s anger and in no time, we realise that there’s a softie lurking behind his granite face. There was ample scope to make Sameer and Vanraj’s relationship adversarial, but Bhansali made the two men friends. Manliness is unconventionally gentle in this romance, and it makes the men contemplative and caring, rather than locking them in ego battles.
Debraj in Black
Black (2005) is one of the few films in Bhansali’s filmography that’s unmistakably centred upon a woman’s story and keeps the male lead as an important but secondary character. The film’s protagonist is Michelle, played by Ayesha Kapur and Rani Mukerji, a deafblind girl whose world is chaos until her teacher Debraj (Amitabh Bachchan) imposes order upon it and helps her make sense of what is around her. Debraj is very much the alpha in the relationship until he realises he has Alzheimer’s disease. In an exhibition of intellectual machismo, he decides unilaterally to abandon Michelle when he feels he’s no longer capable of being her support. He’s the second patriarch in Bhansali’s filmography who has a physical condition that makes him feel powerless and requires him to lean on someone he loved like a daughter.