Welcome to Sajjanpur rating - review

Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008) movie posters :
















Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008) Movie Rating and Review :

Rating :

Acting – 8/10
Direction – 7/10
Screenplay – 6/10
Music – 5/10
Technique – 4/10

Review :

In an age when even emails are considered outmoded and communication connotation are restricted to social networking on Orkut and Facebook, Shyam Benegal has the simplicity to correspond and connect with such antique elements like a postcard or an inland letter.

The spine of Shyam Benegal’s Welcome to Sajjanpur is its rustic, colloquial dialogue. Co-written with Ashok Mishra (who must be saluted for the dialogue dexterity), Benegal’s screenplay pauses to spare a thought for the near extinct art of letter writing. Despite its rural setting, the timing of the story is contemporary and Benegal justifies it through his postgraduate protagonist, conversant with the modern world and by positioning the village at the brink of development.

Shyam Benegal’s Welcome To Sajjanpur is a quaint little road song which has every chance of getting drowned in the cacophony that is Bollywood. But if you do tune in, its innocent melody and heartfelt poetry will surely win you over.

Mahadev (Shreyas) is Mr Powerful who not only charges money for writing letters and postcards, he also gets to read the replies. Almost everyone in Sajjanpur, from the godman to the politician, from the eunuch to the compounder, is dependent on Mahadev to write their way out of trouble or into love.

But Mahadev is no machine that you can hire for an hour and send emails at will. He has a mind of his own. A mind that can swing the dynamics and demographics of Sajjanpur; a mind that does strange things in love.

So while Mahadev pens letters to the collector for the village goon, former sarpanch, Ram Singh (Yashpal Sharma), he also writes the lyrics of the campaign song for the opposition, the neighbourhood eunuch Munni Bai (Ravi Jhankal).

But it is the letter-writing assignments for Kamla potter (Amrita) that sends Mahadev into a complete tizzy. She is the same girl he had kissed in Class II to eat her “gaal ka laddoo” and now 16 years later when he finds that her husband has been away for four years, his mind starts working overtime.

That is the crux of Welcome To Sajjanpur which spells out Shyam Benegal’s message in a movie loud and clear — power can make the best of guys go awry.

Performances from any Shyam Benegal film are no less than superlative and this one has a long list of achievers. Shreyas Talpade as the central character and a part of every episode of the film is confident, natural, spontaneous and effortless in his impeccable act. Cameos from Ravi Kissan, Divya Dutta and Yashpal Sharma are lifelike. Benegal’s favourites – Ravi Jhankal and Ila Arun come up with thoroughly engaging acts. Amrita Rao, as the village belle, is gracefully endearing.

Moving away from both Vanraj Bhatia and A.R. Rahman, Benegal gets Shantanu Moitra to score Sajjanpur. While the rustic charm of the songs work, why did the talented man need to use the themes of Eklavya and Parineeta in the background? But hats off to Samir Chanda for again rustling up a “real” village in a studio.

Shyam Benegal has always been accredited as a mesmerizing storyteller known for making ‘meaningful’ cinema. Welcome To Sajjanpur is slow in parts and sometimes too preachy for comfort but once inside Benegal’s world you will find it difficult not to fall in love with his quaint and charming pather panchali. Take the invitation earnestly. Do pay a visit to Sajjanpur.

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