Mumbai, Sep 19 (IANS) Even though filmmaker and fashion designer Muzzaffar Ali says that Amitabh Bachchan‘s look in “The Last Lear” was styled on him, the director of the film Rituparno Ghosh maintains that Big B was supposed to look like Rabindranath Tagore. “Amitda’s get-up in ‘The Last Lear’ was meant to be like Rabindranath Tagore. Long flowing hair and beard, unkempt and untameable. But he finally ended up looking like M.F. Husain,” Rituparno Ghosh said.
An unexpected problem, however cropped up. “I wanted Amit-da to use crepe on his beard. But I didn’t know he was allergic to artificial facial hair. He had used it in ‘Khuda Gawah’ and ‘Eklavya’. But had decided he won’t thereafter. So we had to drop the long-flowing beard and just stick to the cascading hair.”
End-result? “Amit-da ended up looking more like Husain saab than Rabindranath Tagore.” What better tribute to Husain on his birthday which fell on Wednesday! The film was released last Friday and Amitabh got rave reviews for his performance.
— By Subhash K. Jha
