Let’s begin, as all things must, by nodding to the elephant in the room. The National Awards have long lost their credibility. Long lost the prestige. Long lost the reputation. Each year, the jury, God bless their evolving standards, manages to tunnel into new depths of bafflement. The recognition, once rooted in artistic merit, now contorts, year after year, into state-sponsored storytelling. If you thought The Kashmir Files winning one for “national integration” was the punchline, wait till you hear, The Kerala Story just swept in and bagged two major technical awards this year. So no, it’s no longer provocative to say the awards have lost their sheen. It’s redundant to call it a fall from grace when grace left the chat years ago. There’s no room left to host the elephant because the audience left the building, the walls crumbled, and the roof caved in somewhere around the time taste became optional. And yet, just as we were bracing for another dive into the surreal, something almost revolutionary happened. The same institution that has long mistaken subservience for selection suddenly remembered what it felt like to have a spine, as it awarded Shah Rukh Khan his maiden National Award.
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It is, of course, surprising, almost absurd in retrospect, that in a career spanning 33 years, this is Shah Rukh Khan’s first Best Actor win at the National Awards. But what shocked the purists, the cinephiles, the bystanders, the netizens, was not that he won, but what he won it for…Jawan. Not Swades. Not Chak De India. Not Devdas. Not My Name Is Khan. Not even Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, that little gem he gave the world before the world knew what to do with him. So the moment the announcement dropped on a Friday evening, the internet, predictably, lost its mind. X, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp groups, suddenly, everywhere, everyone had a take. The question bouncing across timelines and keyboards was: Really? For this one? And, to be fair, they had a point. In a just world, he might have won for all of those films. He should have. As a fan, if the decision were mine, he’d already be five statues deep by now. But that’s not how awards work. And, more importantly, that’s not how they should work.
What began to grate, though, wasn’t the criticism. That’s par for the course. What irked me was how the entire discourse, almost subconsciously, kept circling one tired idea: that for a performance to be considered “award-worthy,” it must belong to a certain mold. A certain register. A certain kind of emotion. More specifically, that a performance is only truly great when it is subtle. That it must be internal, contained, minimal. And sure, all of that can be true. Those are real barometers. Valid ones. Beautiful ones even. But what about maximalism as a style? What about performances that are expansive and expressive? What about sometimes liking projection over reflection? What about sometimes rooting for raw energy over internal suffering? Why do we pretend those can’t be just as powerful? Why do we keep acting like the only kind of great acting is the kind that hides itself?
It’s almost a contradictory stance. Because, let’s be honest, most of our films, by definition, lean more on sentiment than sense. By design, they’re loud, emotional, and often built around a star playing an extended, mythic version of himself. Flamboyance isn’t just accepted, it’s expected out of our mainstream movies. It’s what we buy into. It’s what we enjoy when done right. So then, if star acting is so baked into the DNA of our storytelling, why don’t we recognise it? Or rather, forget recognition, why don’t we celebrate it enough? Isn’t being external, visible, heightened just as difficult as being internal and restrained? In fact, I’d argue it’s even harder. Because with that kind of performance, you never quite know where the line is, where it stops being compelling and starts becoming exaggerated. Or what we lazily brush off as “overacting.” And the truth is, the reason we haven’t seen much great star acting in recent years isn’t because the style has aged out, it’s because not everyone can pull it off. It requires a particular kind of presence, a particular kind of projection and a particular kind control over craft. And no, it’s not easy. It never was. It never will be.
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It’s not about pitting one style of acting against another. It’s about understanding that both can be equally significant, equally skilled, and equally moving. And that’s where, God really bless them, the jury seems to have understood something the rest of us often forget. Because if you look at the last few years, the choices speak for themselves. Allu Arjun for Pushpa, a masterclass in flamboyance. Rishab Shetty for Kantara, an earthy, and wildly physical portrayal. Alia Bhatt for Gangubai Kathiawadi, an emotionally-charged performance with some operatic flourishes. And then there is also Vikrant Massey for 12th Fail, an internalised affair showing just how high restraint can soar. If anything, these choices prove that both ends of the spectrum deserve recognition. That one doesn’t cancel out the other. That maximalism and minimalism can, and should, coexist. Which is why their decision to choose Jawan feels not just deserved, but also smart.
Because Jawan is one of the very few massy vehicles in recent memory that actually got it right. And a huge part of that is because of Shah Rukh Khan. The performance is all swagger and style. Every second scene feels like an entry shot. Every fourth, he’s shedding a tear. And every ten minutes, he’s kicking someone through the air. It’s exaggerated. It’s filmy. It’s myth-making at its loudest. But it’s also magnetic. It’s moving. It’s Shah Rukh Khan reminding you what a star performance can look like when it’s done right. It’s also fitting that he’s getting it for Jawan, because it’s the most political he’s ever been on screen. He recognises what we once were as a country, and what we still ought to be. He recognises what this country has given him, and understands that now, it’s his turn to give back. So maybe the real elephant in the room… is him. It’s him, in that final scene, breaking not just the fourth wall, but every wall built on fear and apathy. It’s him, asking the audience to look harder, to question more, to think before they choose. It’s him, firmly pushing back against every form of bigotry, hate, and erasure. It’s him, then, reminding even the jury, what courage looks like. God truly bless him.
