Bachchan cameo in Great Gatsby washed away in tide of praise and pasting for film

WASHINGTON: The rapturous cheers that Indian movie legend Amitabh Bachchan received at the New York premier on Sunday of "The Great Gatsby" was inversely proportional to his role in the film — by his own admission, a blink-and-you-miss cameo. In fact, his role as the Jewish gambler Meyer Wolfsheim is so minor that he doesn’t get a look-in in the trailers, nor a look-out with most critics, except for a shout out from Variety magazine, which said his few minutes on screen was among the two liveliest performance in the movie.
The accolade moved Bachchan, a legend in India and Bollywood-crazed audiences across the world, but little known in Hollywood, to tweet that he was "surprised, unexpected and in shock" at the recognition. But as great actors have shown time and again, you don’t need a whole lot of screen time — an important metric only for Bollywood mediocrities — for legends to showcase their skills. Think Orson Welles in "The Third Man". Dubbed the Greatest Gatsby by Bollywood gadabouts, Bachchan’s debut role in a Hollywood film is even shorter, but evidently he has carried it off with aplomb, although some critics thought the casting was curious.
In fact, such was the ecstatic reception Bachchan got at the New York premier from his fan club that many thought the movie’s hero, Leonardo DiCaprio had arrived. Indeed, American movie gurus have noted that the Indian legend packs more movie appearances (188 by one count) than DiCaprio (35) and Tobey McGuire (48), the other principal in the film, put together.
But this may be a good time to assert that Hollywood is not exactly Bollywood. Pedigree is measured by performance, not numbers.
The jury is still out though for "Gatsby", a movie based on what is widely seen as one of the greatest American novels of all time. For all his legendary status in India and its diaspora and the Bollywood fan club, Bachchan and his performance will be washed away by the tsunami of praise and pasting that Baz Luhrmann’s shot at the book is poised to receive.
Early reviews for the movie opening this weekend have been mixed. Under the headline The Great Ghastly, Daily Beast called it a "relentless assault on the senses," while Huffington Post said it was "all sparkle and no soul." But the influential Hollywood Reporter praised the movie, saying "the cast is first-rate, the ambiance and story provide a measure of intoxication and, most importantly, the core thematic concerns pertaining to the American dream, self-reinvention and love lost, regained and lost again are tenaciously addressed."
Whatever the final verdict and box-office numbers for the movie, two things are unlikely to change: Bachchan’s iconic status in India, and "The Great Gatsby’s" rank and reputation as the best selling American novel of all time — 500,000 copies annually and 25 million worldwide.