Welcome to Sajjanpur

"Welcome to Sajjanpur" is a revival of times on the lines of Malgudi Days and the flavour of of Hrishikesh Mukhejee & Basu Chatterjee. The fictitious village comprises of characters very humane, easily identifiable and oozing with simplicity (well, not quite!).

The narrative is extremely smooth and carries you with the flow. Shyam Benegal attempts an unexplored territory and once again he proves what a versatile director he is. With "Welcome to Sajjanpur" Shyam Benegal to a certain degree incorporates commercial elements into his style yet retaining the flavour of parallel cinema.

All the characters seem hand-picked as they are perfectly suited to the "T". Every actor gets adequate space as per the demands necessitated by the character. It seemed only Divya Dutta's character/ role was not fleshed out / elaborated (and her participation in the end was kind of coming).

In the times of heavy-weights & escapism cinema, "Welcome to Sajjanpur" manages to command a foothold in its own rights. Don't miss this movie at any costs.

It's great to have Shyam Benegal back making films again. He's relaunched himself with a fairly light film, one that reminded me of another of my favorite directors of the 80s, Sai Paranjpe. Both Sai and Shyam are so good at capturing the quirks of village life, warts and all. Welcome To Sajjanpur actually does have some dark elements, but the director doesn't seem to want to ruin India Shining's cheery mood by dwelling on these too much. Be warned, a lot of the language in this film is Bhojpuri, especially the dialogs of Ila Arun. I missed a lot of her funny lines, but the Bhojpuri speaking people in the audience were laughing out loud. The performances of the actors were all great - Shyam is obviously good at casting. Don't know if this film is destines to run for long, so I'd advise everyone to go out and see it right away. Or you could always wait to see it on TV (UTV Spotboy movies make it to TV in 3 months) or buy the DVD (for Rs 50!).

Oh, what a movie! I just finished watching it and I cant think anything bad about this movie. Actors, location, script, music and .... the tremendously talented director.

I cannot imagine how did Shyam Benegal turned such a simple rural story into such a entertaining masterpiece! Yeah, I have not watched much of his movies, which is kind of a sin, I know. But, now that I have seen this, I will surely watch all the others.

The story is about a mostly illiterate village, where our hero Mahadev (Shreyas Talpade) is an educated but unestablished person, who writes and reads letters for people. In this strange occupation, he meets several dimensional persons, such as a superstitious mother of an unmarried girl, an illiterate but benevolent politician, a do-gooder eunuch, a love-struck compounder and the most desired: his childhood crush who is waiting for her husband to come from Mumbai.

Mr Benegal skillfully displayed all of the grayish characters throughout the movie, including our hero. Though the main theme is comedy, the film slowly starts touching into your spines by resembling any of our lives, any normal Indian's life.

I could have gone describing the complete story, but I would really like you guys to go and watch the movie yourself, its like a fantasy story revealing itself slowly to be as normal as any other normal human being.

Kudos, Shyam Benegal.

Yes this is a good movie and worth watching. Here Shyam Benegal gave a good message of democracy and need of literacy with a good comedy essence.

Shreyas Talpade really acted well as in Om Shanti Om and Iqbal. He proved his talent as a potential actor. Amritha Rao , Divya Datta, Ila Arun excellent in their performance.

I liked the language they used in this movie. It is really nice. One more hing I would like to tell about music which is melodious and location no second opinion! it is too good. Shyam Benegal showed his creative mind with very simple,watchful,movie. he is a master of Indian Cinema.

I was also born in a small village like sajjanpur.I usually do not watch many bollywood films but this film is most beautiful and realistic film I have ever watched.It is nicely directed by Shyam Benegal and all the actors and actresses have played nicely specially Shreyas Talpade and Amrita Rao. Shryeas Talpade is a very talented actor. I would also like to mentioned the music of this film which is melodious! it is really great.

Conclusion: This is a very nice film and is worthwhile watching I will give 9 out of 10 for this film and wish that bollywood could make more film like this in future.