Grandson to play Uttam in a documentary

Tollywood hasn���������t heard of this. Neither has Bollywood. And if memory serves right, no actor in Hollywood has ever enacted the role of his grandfather in a documentary.
That���������s precisely why Gourab Chatterjee feels privileged to have enacted his dadu in the first-ever documentary that has been made on his grandfather, Uttam Kumar. The actor will be present at the premiere of the documentary (Mahanayak ��������� A Superstar���������s Journey) on his grandfather���������s death anniversary today.
Ask him about how it felt to step into his grandfather���������s shoes and Gourab says, ���������My father was alive when this project was conceived.Baba had wanted to shoot me when I was younger. But then, somehow that never happened. Later, when my portions were shot, I had already grown up further.���������
While shooting, Gourab never tried to get under the skin of his dadu���������s character. ���������Though I didn���������t model myself on any picture of his, I���������m told that at my age, he did somewhat resemble me! I wasn���������t born when dadu expired. So my impressions of him are based on recollections of my family members. Dadu didn���������t have any particular mannerism that would typecast him. I didn���������t have to study his films to pick up his body language. For me, dadu is a legend and I approach him like an actor.���������
While acting as dadu does make Gourab proud, he admits that not enough has been done in his grandfather���������s memory in comparison to the hysteria that still surrounds the legend. ���������I often meet a gentleman who was my dadu���������s contemporary. He keeps asking me when some of dadu���������s movies, apart from the usual ones, will be screened on television. If I tell him that those movies haven���������t been preserved, he���������ll die of a heart attack. But that���������s reality. I guess, it���������s all about time. Dadu was born at the right place at the right time. He had the association of great directors, scriptwriters and composers. The golden age of Bengali cinema gave us those movies. Everything has its pros and cons. While the films were great, little heed was paid to their preservation. Had he been born today, his films would have enjoyed the benefits of a technically sound industry. But then, who knows if those would have been as good as those of yesteryears?���������
Follow us on Twitter for more stories