You will be welcomed to Sajjanpur, but be prepared to go out disappointed
[random thoughts, totally opinionated rants]
Well lets start with a brief story. Sunday afternoons were a pain for me for the first 12 years of my life. Of all the days, I hated this one the most. Not because it was the one day without school (I hated school too) but the incessant lecturing I used to receive from my uncle on every socio-political issue at that time. He made me read every article in the news that week; scribble down points and made me understand the various aspects. To make it more interesting, or so he thought he used to conjure up fables and stories with moralistic twists at the end. Needless to say I hated it, it was torture. I hated lecturing all my life, hated stories with morals in it, hated those old doordarshan film which we used to watch in our old battered black and white television. Now they don’t give me nostalgia, just a recurring sense of boredom.
Now one wonders why I might recollect my Sunday afternoon horrors while talking about WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR. Well because that is exactly what SAJJANPUR reminded me off. A lecture in every social and political issue in the last four years, bundled together in an unsymmetrical fashion in the garb of a film.
SAJJANPUR the center of the film, a town somewhere in India, has similar problems which are being faced by the majority of the rural masses Everything from illiteracy, class distinction, political oppression and a thousand other diseases plague the town. But unfortunately somewhere among all the problems and issues that BENEGAL felt the need to address the real story got lost somewhere. A story which had all the ingredients for a perfectly light hearted tale, a story of Mahadev who writes letters for the villagers at minimal charges and his unrequited love. Indeed the basic plot was beautiful, simplistic and poignant and could have moved well on its own, and it did. Until all the problems started to rise and the film broke off in so many different directions that even the director couldn’t keep count of every thread. The result, at the end when it all needed to culminate together, the director could only somehow manage to tie them up in a clumsy knot, barely justifying their presence.
Things worsen as shantanu moitra churns up one dreadful song after the other, not only ruining the pace of the film but also the mood. But that leads me to wonder which was worse, the less than memorable songs (strangely sung in perfect Hindi, in contrast to the rest of the film) or the way they were shot. But on second thought am grateful that the songs were there, atleast it provided me with a break from the endless milieu of problems.
The acting though seemingly theatrical at parts (wondering if it was intended), was pretty well performed. Though none of them even remotely memorable as the performances in previous BENEGAL films, suited the film and context. Shreyas talpade in his most challenging role till date manages to hold his own, occasionally even showing us that brilliant spark of a gem that we all know he is. It’s his character which breathes life into the film, providing for the much needed humor in this “comedy”.
To its credit and justifiability of its comic tag, the film produces a few genuinely hilarious scene, probably some of the best seen in Indian cinema in a long time, showing us that the director is very much capable of entertaining its audience when he wants to. But for every such moment of hilarity the director demands long strenuous, never ending lectures. We are all aware of our social problems and its justified that a director would feel the need to address its audience about it, but when its done sacrificing the film in such monotonous way it feels intolerable.
Irrespective of anyone’s likeness for the film one has to admit the screenplay was one of the most difficult that has been seen translated on to the screen. One can only admire the patience it must have taken the writer to carefully accumulate everything inside the span of two hours. The dialogues were well written and smart for the most part, though the dialect requires a while to get used to. Brilliant it might be but the screenplay does manage to produce some of the most embarrassing scenes not only in a BENEGAL film but for any film having a sense of class. A particularly awkward scene where Ravi Kishan feels up the village widow he has a crush on, inside the hospital in the name of checkup; stands out gross and embarrassing, a few other sex jokes scattered through out doesn’t help matters much either.
The saddest part of WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR for me was that the director didn’t fail. It wasn’t like he intended to create something else, and ended up with something. BENEGAL did exactly what he wanted; this is how he wanted his film to be, a droning social commentary, that reminds one of those old shows on doordarshan. The basic plot was only there as an excuse, a support for the various stories to have a reason. He could have easily made a thousand social campaign ads from the various stories, which might have struck the audience in a better way.
However the biggest plus one finds in the film is the honesty which the filmmaker shows his subject, the dedication with which he crafts even the minutest details, but alas so much honesty turns out sour.
To end with, I grew up with SHYAM BENEGAL’S films, its not like am not acquainted with his work. I came in expecting a strong social statement. But I also expected a film, which sadly was lost somewhere between the time MAHADEV wrote that letter to the district magistrate and when he finally managed to publish his book.
At the end of the film, the audience in the theater broke out on a short applause. I wish I could have shared their feelings.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Hi rusted, haven’t seen the film yet..but on the hole, your random jot reminds me of what I used to feel for a certain film-maker(main naam nahiin bataunga, naam mein log mazhab dhoond lete hain!! ;))
: easy to admire, hard to love..
@kshitji
bata do, bata do
no one will mind here
People can spend hours and hours to discuss Lemon (sorry Lehman) and Sub Prime Crisis and US President Elections, but when it comes to our rural issues, it becomes a lecture..
Think America Curse India.. The film is not for you…
@pavan
it doesnt become a lecture if said properly.
am not being ignorant of the rural problems, its just that when you make a “film” your only concern should not be delivering messages after messages, thats when it starts becoming monotonous and feels like a lecture.
but its true i guess, the movie might not have been for me, and i truly hope for the sake of shyam babu that the film finds the audience it was intended for.
I look at it like this. As Shyam Babu sat twiddling his thumbs on a sultry Mumbai afternoon in 2006, he was faced with two choices – a. Either you spend the rest of your life staring at the DVDs of your classics – national award winning but now dust-laden OR b. Make a movie which the multiplex audience would be interested in seeing without asking you to sell your soul. That afternoon, he made a choice and I am glad he did, because I, for one, am definitely not disappointed with what he churned out.
Kabhi ek BIMARU gaaon ghoom aao dost. Tab shaayad Sajjanpur ka maahaul samajh aa jaayega. Ya kamaskam Hindi sahitya ka koi classic hi padh lo – Renu’s Maila Aanchal, Shukla’s Raag Darbari or some Harishankar Parsayi vyangya. The Hindi satire, when placed in the Indian hinterland setting, smells just like Shyam Babu made it smell in WTS.
The obvious Shyam Benegal movie you can compare it to is Suraj ka Saatvan Ghoda (let’s leave Ankur, Nishant etc out as they were in no way meant to be satires…they were hard-hitting socio-political statements). But SKSG itself was different…it came from a different school of writing (Dharamvir Bharti’s style of subtle satire, very different from the otherwise all-guns-blazing form of his contemporaries).
For me, WTS worked…despite 2-3 horrible songs (liked the eunuch song though…was a dig at the antics the local political parties use in the local elections in North / Central)…despite Shreyas trying-to-be-funny Talpade, totally out of place in the character-driven-not-reactions-driven comedy…despite the horrible look-Mom-an-Indian-village promos. It worked because the soul’s in place…his Sajjanpur is my hometown Sujangarh. It worked because it’s in line with the great tradition of the Hindi vyangya.
Kudos Shyam Babu, for being able to make a film like this in today’s times of the Hollywood-aping Bollywood.
@sudip
i have read all the “sahitya”, i have spent years in purulia, i know the existence of sajjanpur. i feel for those people of rural india. but sadly i couldn’t smell there scent in the airs of sajjanpur. whenever i got a whiff of it, the film either conjured up a new plot line or broke into song and dance.
but I’ll agree with you, the only great thing about sajjanpur is that its soul is in the right place. its honest. but then again, i felt that honesty was what dragged it down.
i couldn’t even think of comparing it with suraj ka satvan ghoda, which is my favorite benegal film, as you yourself said, the satire in suraj ka.. was subtle whereas i felt it was anything but subtle here.
@sudip
Wasn’t the movie supposed to appeal to multiplex audience(as u mentioned) who has not read hindi sahitya or visited a BIMARU gaaon?
Like Rick I too just couldnt connect with Sajjanpur. It was way over the top in its social statement thingy.
i have to agree with Sudip who has summarized it aptly..Shyam babu took his choice and smart one he did..Shyam Benegal of Nishant, Ankur was speaking to the reality of that day – the mid 70’s..this is his perspective of today and he realizes that hard hitting tomes dont work. So subtle thoughts said in the popular narrative of today: the comedy..
He is also an extremely intelligent man and this was the medium to highlight his angst that rural india is fallen out of the urban conscioussness
I tend to agree with Rick. I’m not really well aquainted with Benegal’s earlier work- i am aware of it and am familiar with the kind of cinema he has made in the past- but I have only seen his Zubeidaa (good, but unsatisfying) and Bose (which I thought was rather staid and shoddy). The theatre like telling didn’t work for me, the screenplay was way too disjointed and incoherent and lacked a solid backbone, and most importantly, the characters were far from memorable. Yes, this is definitely not the absolute delight it should have been. Very inconsistent and hurriedly wrapped up, and by the time it ends, it has already outstayed it’s welcome. I had no problem with the dialect and I love this kind of old world, earthy dialogue that is very Malgudi days, but still it lacked spark. None of the dialogues made me go wow, they and the preachiness gets to you- it is the kind of dialogue that worked wonderfully in those social satire kind of plays in Hindi- say, something like Habib Tanvir’s Charandas Chor, but feels too out of place here. Even the village setting was way too staged, and I think Benegal lost the balance between making the film in a theatrical style. Shreyas was good, but Amrita Rao was way too labored to be convincing- the only guy who really stood out for me was Ravi Jhankal. It just ends being a very well intentioned and commendable effort, not the **** masterpiece Rajeev Masand says it is (the guy clearly is way out of his mind these days). Still, I welcome Sajjanpur in our filmi fold- undeniably we do need more honest films like WTS and Hulla, even if many of them falter ultimately.
BTW- there are quite a few typos in the post- correct them Rick, when you can.
“At the end of the film, the audience in the theater broke out on a short applause. I wish I could have shared their feelings.”
Do you know why?
because you are a typical bengali “aantel”…
@nillohit
thanks for such kind words man, how does not liking a film make me ” a typical bengali aantel”?
@Nillohit
don’t u know any other word apart from “aantel”
dude, get a life….
@Rick
couldn’t agree more
:-)
just curious to know what is “aantel”…..lolz
@ashwin
aantel in bengali means “intellectual”
@ashwin
If I write(err..type) then you may not believe it…so…
http://education.indiatimes.com/educationTimes/getArticleDetail.do?articleid=20080514200805142113473518907fd3f
:-)
@RR,
lecture?? kidhe??
commentary sure…
par lecture kidhar suna?