But does it mean the characters have finally overshadowed the stars? Avinash Das, another debutant director, who made Anaarkali of Aarah (2017) featuring Swara Bhaskar in the titular role, states that the film industry has rejected the traditional concept of beauty in cinema. “Now, the beauty of the story is linked only to the beauty of the character,” he says. “There was a time when the yardstick of beauty on screen was different. For us, Meena Kumari, Madhubala and Nutan were all beautiful. It was only in the post-globalisation era that the concept changed with a synthetic ‘beauty boom’. It began with Miss Universe and percolated down to the smallest town across the country, a phenomenon that was encashed well by the cinema of the 1990s. But in the era of digital centralisation, what kind of a movie is being made will determine what kind of actors will be part of it.”