Greatness, they say, is never thrust on you. You are either born with it. Or you are not. Amitabh Bachchan is at a place today where nothing and everything he does surprises us. As the aging cantankerous flamboyant eccentric and embittered Shakespearean actor battling old age, unwieldy hair and a receding genius, the ongoing Bachchan saga gets one more twist in the tale.

And what a tale! Rituparno Ghosh specializes in telling stories that pitch two utterly unmatched characters against one another in a battle where the lines are drawn between the egos of the two individuals. The Last Lear is actually a series of dramatic dialogues sewn together in a pastiche that suggests pain to be the constant sublimed text of all human interaction. So we have this bearded ‘intense’ director Siddharth (Arjun Rampal) who decides to make a film on the life of an unemployed aging clown. For the role he approaches the reclusive wacky stage- actor Harry Mishra (Bachchan) who sneers wryly at the very thought of entering cinema at his age, and then warms up to the idea and gives the part his heart and soul.

Hmm…. Interesting possibilities pitching cinema against theatre, examined explored searched and dissected by the director with the microscopic maneuverings of emotions that the camera ferrets out of the human heart and makes visible to our eyes. In Ghosh’s incandescent world of human suffering and redemption, you won’t find more than two people in the same room at any given time. Sometimes there are three. But then the third individual is so still in her space, you hardly notice her presence beyond a shadow. Such is the truth of Divya Dutta’s character. As the benevolent nurse on night duty to look after the dying Shakespearean actor, she gives the actor’s mistress Vandana (Shefali Shah) and his co-star Shabnam (Preity) quiet company as the two women talk the night away on the man they’re both fascinated by.

Ghosh goes backward in time from the night the film featuring Harry Mishra is premiered to the interactive events leading up to his selection and shooting for the film…The narration is purposely loose-limbed. Even the one-to-one interactions that are the backbone of this beautifully layered chamber-piece are done with the casual grace of a trapeze dancer walking the familiar tightrope blindfolded and not fearful of the fall. The characters are all in desperate need of redemption. Whether it’s the jaded but still-spirited Shakespearean actor or his unhappy overworked mistress, or the model-turned actress Shabnam, or even the young journalist (Jisshu Sengupta) trying to piece together the opulent mystique of the Shakespearean actor’s ego and enigma. The characters are perched on the brink of self-destruction, holding on to that thread of self-esteem, which keeps them from that fatal fall.

The Last Lear is Ghosh’s second film in a row after the Bengali Khela to be located in the film world. The distance between the ‘reality’ of the acting world and the realism of the real world where people are often acting before one another, is covered by the sensitive director with supple grace. The English dialogues are spun in spoken sensitivity. But the words do get in the way of the characters’ sometimes. Rituparno Ghosh is a man of nuances. He revels in deep focusing on the quirks and whims of his characters, and in deriving drama out of their innermost demons and insecurities.

When the film starts, Shabnam is on the verge of breaking up with her suspicious boyfriend. By the time she starts shooting with Harry Mishra in a scenic hill station she’s in an off-camera dialogue with her aged co-star and ready to scream out her angst in a war-cry of articulated liberation. The moment reminded me of the closing scenes in Ritwick Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara or nearer in time, Konkona Sen-Sharma’s screaming self-assertions in Anurag Basu’s Metro.

Preity Zinta in her most accomplished performance to date does here what most actors shy away from. She actually listens to her co-stars as they express their angst. The film is littered with luminous performances. If Divya Dutta is quiet and warm in her small role Shefali Shah simply takes over the screen each time she walks into the frames. Here’s an actress who forces you to watch her. And after Rock On Arjun Rampal delivers another pain-lashed performance, giving to the director’s role a resonance that takes it to an inexpected level of sensitivity.

As for Mr. Bachchan, what words would describe his wordy praiseworthy character, as the Shakespearean rhetorics and senile cynicism flow out in an un-stoppered show of a fading inner-glow? His expressions of uncertainty as he’s forced to step out of his home into the arc lights by the insistent director, or when he’s approached for an autograph or when he grovels on the floor in a drunken haze in front of his embarrassed director, show an actor at the peak of his abilities totally liberated of all starry vanity. Mr. B goes from venom to vitality in quick successions creating for his character of kingdom of theatrical yearnings. What do we say to the genius of Amitabh Bachchan…except Salaam, Mr. Bachchan. Salaam, Shakespeare. Rituparno Ghosh has created a world carved out of mahogany-like glistening surfaces(Indranil Ghosh’s artwork and Abhik Mukherjee’s cameras write out the poetry of the motion picture) hiding fears and anxieties that have little to do with age, and everything to do with the rage that the experience of life brings in its wake.