I was confused the moment the censor certificate came on as it said "Mahadev ka Sajjanpur" and i thought i could not have made that big a mistake and read the title wrong through all the publicity and the movie lists and the ticket in my hand!! But even as the title of the film reassuringly came as Welcome to Sajjanpur, the confusion stayed with me throughout the film and stays even now.
I don't know if i like the film or not.. considering it was shyam benegal, expectations were obviously high.. and the grand old man of indian cinema didn't fail to deliver.. But there was something lacking in the entire experience. I don't know if its fair to compare but i can't resist.. The film reminded me of various others.. The Brazilian Central Station, that starts with a woman sitting on the roadside and writing letters for people who pay her for it and which she never actually posts! Much more reminiscent of the Cuban Nada which has a postal worker reading people's letters and rewriting them in a much more intense and eloquent fashion before sending them off to the intended recipients.. but closer home, it reminded me of the unsurpassable, Sooraj ka Satva Ghora held together by a single narrator and cleverly and effortlessly weaving the stories of many many characters into a beautiful tapestry. That effortlessness was what the story of Mahadev lacked. And i realised that i don't quite like the protagonist talking to the audience and would have preferred him telling the story to someone else.. perhaps the publisher of his book to tie up the end.
In Sooraj ka Satvan Ghora i cared for each character and was excited by their stories.. in Sajjanpur, i really didn't care much for any.. they all came and went as one dimensional people who collectively gave the character to the town Sajjanpur which perhaps was the main character.. emblematic of many small sleepy town across the country whose central concerns like farmers selling of lands of migrating to cities, superstition, violent and oppressive politicians and caste structures all come to the fore albeit in a light comedic manner that is perhaps intended to be palatable to the multiplex audience.
The songs were perhaps intended as relief and brought forward aspirations of the villagers towards material comforts and extravagances and dreams of bollywood romances. Had they been better written and composed, half the hall would not have taken bathroom breaks while Shreyas Talpade and Amrita Rao went from plain clothed villagers to slick city generation next as they hummed some forgettable lyrics.
Performance wise everyone from Talpade who held the whole thing together to Putru the dog were good. Ila Arun was delightful with her hilarious portrayal of the loud, worried superstitious village woman marrying off her daughter to a shanichari dog to counter the mangal effect! Reminded me of herself in Mandi and reaffirmed my belief that with the right director she can be absolutely brilliant on screen. I guess the relief of seeing her in plain clothes unlike her gaudily dressed overly made up and bejeweled avatar on the telly added to the whole effect!
On the whole i felt happy about the widow remarriage, oneness with the farmers, sympathy for munni bai, anger towards her killers (although my stereotype accustomed brain thought the other election candidate didn't really look like she could be a violent murderer) and all the other politically correct things that i was supposed to feel. I even commend the currently fashionable shades of grey in the main character as he manipulates the letters to seduce kamala kumharin. But on the whole, the movie had too much to say and too many ways to say it. At the end of the film that possibly raises some really recent and compelling issues i came out feeling that everything is well settled and allright which is clearly not the case. Personally, a little less prominence to Mahadev and a little more build up of the other stories (and perhaps removing the songs or at least restricting them to the background score) would have made it much more interesting. I would have loved a little more of ila arun's histrionics, Divya Dutta's stern resilience, Rajeshwari's silent affair and Munni bai's election battle.
I guess i would advise people to go watch it, but it doesn't raise much emotion in me. I guess i prefer the dark humour of Mandi to the slapstick of Sajjanpur.
