'Saaheb' is a movie that grows on you .. slowly and surely. You'd want to watch it over and over again to appreciate the subtlety with which the travails of a middle class Indian family are captured on celluloid. Utpal Dutt, Rakhee & Anil Kapoor deliver stellar performances that are restrained yet eloquent. Silent yet expressive. Soft in execution yet hard-hitting with strong messages. Even the character actors in this movie are very believable and hence good to watch and identify with. At no place, do you feel that what you are seeing in front of you is not something that you have already witnessed at some point of time in your life either with yourself or someone close to you. The story itself is about a middle class Indian family that's going through the routines of life. So, you have a young college student, Anil Kapoor, who dreams of making it big in life through his first love - playing football. Rakhee plays the doting bhabhi who treats him like a son but is unsure of how to reconcile his differences with his father Utpal Dutt who thinks playing football is a waste of time and instead he should focus on clearing his graduation and look for a job to contribute monetarily in the house. There are the regular caricatures of no-good sons who don't want to accept responsibility beyond a point and are thus of no reassurance to the hapless father looking for their support in marrying off his only daughter, the youngest sister to the four brothers. The story progresses and circumstances change that drives Saaheb to give up on his football career dream to come good on expectations, that are set by his own value system, to contribute to the cause of his sister's marriage and help out in completing his father's last responsibility.
"Sloppy!" Do I hear you say? Say it at your own peril for Director, Anil Ganguli, treads the path of storytelling with such finesse that you can't help but feel for the protagonist's dilemma and his decisiveness in addressing the same, in the end, without remorse and any emotional overkill. In the end, teary-eyed, you walk away from the movie reprimanding yourself for all those selfish decisions that you have taken in your life that did not have much relevance for anyone else except yourself and in making happy you alone. You walk away inspired to resurrect whatever self-respect you have left to reach out and tell your family that you love them and are there for them, no matter what. 'Saaheb' is about sacrifice. 'Saaheb' is about facing your moral dilemmas and finding out who you really are. 'Saaheb' is about valuing relationships. 'Saaheb' is about saving the goal, as the director shows us by brilliantly choosing to show his protagonist as a goalkeeper, at the beginning of the movie. Its a decision, the metaphorical interpretation of which dawns upon you only at the end of the movie. As one of the characters says, translated in English,"There are many players in a football team but there's only one goalkeeper". The weight of that statement stays with you for quite sometime and causes you to think back and reflect upon on your life. You are bound to try and count how many goals did YOU really manage to save when your family needed you in the football of life, and feel sad or proud, accordingly!!!
Such Cinema is rare to come by now. If you've not seen it yet, you are missing something. Do yourself a favor and watch it today. You'll probably realize that the best things in life are really not what you have been chasing all this while....
"Sloppy!" Do I hear you say? Say it at your own peril for Director, Anil Ganguli, treads the path of storytelling with such finesse that you can't help but feel for the protagonist's dilemma and his decisiveness in addressing the same, in the end, without remorse and any emotional overkill. In the end, teary-eyed, you walk away from the movie reprimanding yourself for all those selfish decisions that you have taken in your life that did not have much relevance for anyone else except yourself and in making happy you alone. You walk away inspired to resurrect whatever self-respect you have left to reach out and tell your family that you love them and are there for them, no matter what. 'Saaheb' is about sacrifice. 'Saaheb' is about facing your moral dilemmas and finding out who you really are. 'Saaheb' is about valuing relationships. 'Saaheb' is about saving the goal, as the director shows us by brilliantly choosing to show his protagonist as a goalkeeper, at the beginning of the movie. Its a decision, the metaphorical interpretation of which dawns upon you only at the end of the movie. As one of the characters says, translated in English,"There are many players in a football team but there's only one goalkeeper". The weight of that statement stays with you for quite sometime and causes you to think back and reflect upon on your life. You are bound to try and count how many goals did YOU really manage to save when your family needed you in the football of life, and feel sad or proud, accordingly!!!
Such Cinema is rare to come by now. If you've not seen it yet, you are missing something. Do yourself a favor and watch it today. You'll probably realize that the best things in life are really not what you have been chasing all this while....