Movies about mediocre artists almost never get made, for the obvious reason that history has rightfully forgotten about them. It’s a delicious indignity, for example, that the great Oscar-winning adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play about the obscure Italian composer Antonio Salieri is called Amadeus, after the musical savant whose genius far eclipsed him. Sometimes generational fame is a matter of timing or ineffable charisma, as the Coen brothers movie Inside Llewyn Davis implied about its hero, a never-was folk musician. (It seems no coincidence that the man who played Salieri, F Murray Abraham, delivers the devastating news that he “doesn’t see any money” in the singer’s work.) But in the real world, such stories are written constantly, since so few have the goods to realize their dreams of greatness.
The superb Indian drama The Disciple, picked up and released last year on Netflix, offers the rarest of rare portraits of artistic mediocrities, because it’s not about that precious window of fame that’s usually sparked in youth. It’s not even about the pursuit of fame at all per se, at least beyond the narrow slice of connoisseurs who appreciate the rigors of traditional Indian classical music. For Sharad (Aditya Modak), a passionate young musician who’s learning at the feet (and sometimes massaging those feet) of Guruji (Arun Dravid), a master vocalist, patience is a necessary virtue. After one disappointing performance, Sharad is told that singers can’t be expected to find their voice until they’re 40. At that point in the film, he’s 16 years away.
