Volume 46, Number 15 · October 7, 1999
The Poet of Karma
By Patricia Storace
There are actors and actresses who shape themselves as great images, and others who shape themselves as great interpreters. Elizabeth Taylor is of the first type, as was Clark Gable; they are the camera's lovers, they require the camera's recording of even her tantrums or his sleazy trickeries as a form of adoration. Madhur Jaffrey of Delhi is of the second type; she may accept the camera's adoration, even invite it, but the actress who forms herself as a great interpreter also defies the camera, refuses it, rebukes its easy credulity, reminds it of all it does not and can never know. Her performances do not depend on the projection of brilliant personality, but on the suggestion of history—complex, unresolved, at times unknowable and inescapable. Madhur Jaffrey confronts the camera with its limitations; the machine can film her in the most intense close-up within its capacity—but it cannot film what is inside her un-less she allows it. She is an actress who treats the camera as if she were its director.
Feature, 1509 words
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