Review of Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008) by Angie M — 01 Nov 2008

Sajjanpur (roughly translates to town of gentlemen) narrates its tale through the voice of a letter-writer, the only educated man in this village somewhere in interior India. Amidst the rural setting and the small-town problems, Benegal does what he does best - portray the human condition that is generalizable beyond the story he chooses. His protagonist is an aspiring novel writer, and we the audience become essentially his target readers as he publishes a novel with the story of his life. So, in effect, the satirical exaggeration of the village-ness of the characters, is through his eyes. Being the only one with education, he views a lot of the events with amusement. As a letter-writer, he is in a perfect position to observe, as all correspondence - personal or business - goes through him. Yet, despite himself, he does not maintain detachment from the people who come to him everyday. He cannot remove his own emotions - or biases - when writing letters. If he is crude while writing for the corrupted village hoodlum, then he is heartfelt and respectful while writing for his candidate of choice; if he is deliberately trying to sabotage the marriage of his childhood crush, then he is also using that feeling as muse for writing a love letter for his best friend. Perhaps, in the lives of those he writes for that are irrevocably changed because of his meddling, the director questions the reliability of the narrative voice. That is further hinted at in the end when we discover that Mahadev had fictionalized at least two accounts in his book.

Shreyas Talpade was the apt performer for the role of Mahadev. He has the look of an ordinary "sajjan" and his non-hero way of carrying himself warms him to everyone, but at the same time prevents drawing too much attention. There is a common man niceness about him - a stand-in for your regular Indian guy who is entrenched within the system, has enough principles not to be entirely corrupted by it, but too helpless to fight it. Antithetical to him are the two individuals battling for power in the village: Yashpal Sharma, who once again plays a power-hungry, corrupt village goon; and Ravi Jhankal's portrayed hijra by the name of Munnibai, who fights against the discrimination and stigma against her kind.

Shyam Benegal has to be commended for getting each and every actor molded into the typical dehaat look. I have untrained ears, but I couldn't seem to find any flaws in the actors' diction of the rural lingo or in their body language. I was especially impressed by Ila Arun, who was last seen in a very different role in Jodhaa Akbar.

The comedy of the movie comes out of the parodical way a lot of the issues are played out - illiteracy, superstitions, caste system, jungle politics, rural mentality - but I felt that in trying to shove as many of them as possible in the plot, Benegal failed to give any of them the depth they deserved. The way he handled the subject matter had a sense of "nothing new". I thought just keeping focus on, or perhaps elaborating, one or two of the issues would have elevated the quality of the story much more.