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Bajpayee broke out with Ramgopal Varma's Satya, a film filled with now-known names. His Bhiku Mhatre did nothing by half-measures: if he was frightening, he was completely so; if it was a joke he was cracking, it was sure to elicit laughter.
As an upright cop in goon country, Bajpayee made for an electrifying presence, his everyman demeanour lending him an aura of believability in the role.
In this Chandraprakash Dwivedi-helmed Partition story adapted from a novel by Amrita Pritam, Bajpayee was Rashid, a Muslim man who falls in love with the Hindu woman Puro (Urmila Matondkar) he abducts during the hysterical madness of the split.
As the reluctant prisoner of war who has yet another stab at soldiering by leading a breakout in Amrit Sagar's film, Bajpayee moved mountains, disappearing as he so often does into his character such that it was difficult to imagine this was a fictionalised account of a life many had led post-1971.
The vengeful son, the lust-filled lover, the erratic father, all of these traits came together in an Anurag Kashyap-directed turn that has firmly established itself in the pantheon of great Hindi cinema performances.
Playing an AMU professor of Marathi hounded for his sexual orientation in Hansal Mehta's film, Bajpayee was devastatingly effective, bringing an authentic melancholia to the role and to the film.
In Devashish Makhija's film, Bajpayee, a migrant, played Bhonsle, a Marathi manoos who takes a stand against local political forces that are determined to drive out the migrants and assert the local culture by force.
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