What is it with Abhishek Bachchan and crooked entrepreneurs? In the upcoming Amazon Prime Video release The Big Bull , Bachchan plays a sto...
What is it with Abhishek Bachchan and crooked entrepreneurs? In the upcoming Amazon Prime Video release The Big Bull, Bachchan plays a stock broker loosely based on the controversial Harshad Mehta. The movie’s trailer drew comparisons with another dishonest gent previously played by Bachchan – Gurukant Desai from Mani Ratnam’s Guru.
The 2007 film is a benign portrait of a businessman who bends the rules, doles out bribes and commits fraud in pursuit of profit. According to Ratnam’s screenplay, the go-getter fondly known as “Guru” is an inevitable byproduct of India’s red tape-heavy Licence Raj years. Guru doesn’t allow the logic of the market or the country’s laws to interrupt his inexorable progress. The movie treats Guru as the biggest breath of fresh air blowing through a mouldy economy.
Guru’s celebration of a form of capitalism that thrives beyond the pale of probity diverges considerably from Indian movies that have traditionally viewed the business world with suspicion. The Nehruvian legacy of state-controlled capitalism from the 1950s until the 1980s inspired a raft of films in which moneyed men were treated with disdain and disgust. Clad in safari suits whatever the time of day, clutching cigars and travelling in cavernous cars, these industrial lords kept lovers apart,...
