Yet-another motion picture churned out by yet-another son of yester-year’s yet-another director with yet-another tale revolving around yet-another joint family with yet-another patriarch hugging yet another doting wifey mouthing yet-another preaching to his yet-another offspring gone to yet-another house… I gave yet another sigh! With yet-another imagination sizing just a point above a diddly squat, I subjected myself to yet-another family saga, but is Baghban just that --- yet-another family saga or something more? Read on.
Meet Raj Malhotra (Amitabh), a 60-year old paterfamilias, on the edge of his 40th nuptial anniversary with a similar-aged (change that to half-aged I beg) Puja (A cardamom-fresh Hema Malini) and even nearer to his retirement from a bank where he serviced for 30 odd years. A well-to-do rented household (replete with a harmonic yet raucous landlord) which hangs in the traditional, circumscribed lines of bourgeois geometry gets all decked up for celebration and thus enter Raj and Puja’s four legitimate scions completely betwixt their better halves and offsprings (defying both their and their parents’ age!). Accurately, it takes two songs and 30 minutes to establish who’s son is who’s father and assess how much each sibling adores his two fountainheads (which, quite expectantly, is equivalent for the reproduced and their respective married population!) and the winner, undoubtedly appears, a now-Londoner, soon-to-be-wedlocked, adopted strip-ling (who else but Salman) who’s love evidently flows in flowery sweet-whisperings he utters over the telephoon!
Time to get serious! With father’s resignation duly accomplished and celebrated, the parents’ long-been-stalled-for-financial-reasons feelings to live together with their children and experience life, blossoms, and with all offers of further work intentionally rejected by papa dearest (who’s financially null as well thanks to his ever-in-need biological sons!), he, together with his wife questions his sons + their wives (whom he considers his four pillars) if they can be allowed to live in their sons’ houses in succession… to be a part of their lives.
And thus a humble question of care-taking of the oldest gardener (hence the name—Baghban) of the family’s garden and his wife becomes a threat to the living-in-the-fast-lane siblings. When a hatched plan aimed to separate the thoroughly-together parents is foiled thanks to the mother’s innocent comprehension of an otherwise-malicious offer (of a parent with a son), starts a journey where real depths of relationships show up.
Heart-rending moments abound aplenty as humble requests and observations get coined as burdening stacks of forced, stressful, generation-old irrelevant nothings; cheap pleasures being derived from bashful, innocent romantic acquaintances of the separated couple; moments of realisation being gulped down the guardians’ throats that it was totally on their sons’ abilities (And not the parent’s upbringing) that has made them see the sun; moments where every nook and cranny of their existence gets ruled by their children. In such emotionally-exhausting, eye-opening moments.. do the parents reciprocate? That’s exactly what Baghban’s all about, and that’s probably the best part of the flick. Accompanied with a creative streak, a heart-opening jotting of words by the distressed father, which goes on to become the best-seller is where recuperation of the character’s conditions and the flick occurs, and that too, with careful, palpable delicacy.
Chopra Jr. as the director has done a fabulous job in magnifying the strengths of the well-written script, but dots and blots it with formulaic elements. Excelling in gracefully portraying the sequences of the mature couple’s romance, the film’s garden seems dry and unchanged at corners on retrospection. For once, pitting adopted offsprings ( these are the “Namaskar babuji” “Pairipuna Maaji, “Namaste” “Aap Mere Bhagwaan hain” types) and bloodlines (these are the ungrateful, selfish dummies stuffed with pompousness, and possessing a stone-of-a-heart) in pure black and white has been done-to-death and is probably the driest part here. Its only accentuated by a large number of sons with synchronised rant.
Moreover, the parents’ subjection to verbal torture for full hex-months on the foundation of a cross-heart seemed too far-fetched, when in all probability the promise could have been broken and the couple be together sooner. Moreover, a few glitches (read clichés) in the screenplay don’t help either (a granny coming to rescue a fast-lane grand-daughter, faithful dogs reaching their guardian house by themselves). Trivial they might seem here, they blur the sheen of an otherwise thoughtful subject presented and enacted wonderfully otherwise.
The film’s roots, undoubtedly, are in its performances. Bachchan senior’s feverish enthusiasm in the dances, his addictive renditions (be it in a thumping Avadhi Holi number or a depressing sad ditty) and his immaculate orchestration with his character (which unexpectedly is the protagonist here, giving ample screen-time and adequate sequences for the BigB to display histrionics), makes this performance one of his recent best.
Malini looks like a dream, defies her age and plays the mature lover, the caring mother and even the observant granny with accomplished ease. Though her character encompasses clichéd sequences galore, her unblemished talent revives them to positively-likeable heights. Her on-screen chemistry with Bachchan seemed calculative and mechanical in the first few moments, but gets elegantly settled to form the strong and melting mantle of the emotion here.
Salman looks too up-to-the-minute to do the “Om-Jai-Jagdish Hare” job assigned to him here, but amusingly, carries it off with seldom-seen grace and emotion. Chaudhary is definitely wasted here while the sons-cum-scoundrels played by Aman Verma, Samir Soni are believable, if overtly-dramatised. Divyaa Dutta and Rimi Sen are good in whatever little they do, while Paresh Rawal coupled with Lilette Dubey are excellent as the Delhi couple and possessing a wonderful comic timing here, provide ample, much-needed relief. Music by Aadesh Srivastava passes muster with playful ditties but quick succession of songs in the first half notwithstanding.
Baghban sticks because its honest about what its delivering (a bit of celebration of the Bollywood genre forgiven). Much removed from the shallow interpretations and promises of captions (“Its all about loving your parents” et al) of its similar soggy predecessors, this one implants a worthy question, that of whether elders should be guarded by their grown-up kids in their climactic years of life and very subtly holds a significant message as an answer for the heads at both ends of the life-band. For the youth, of identifying and relating their lives to their parents, to pour light on the fact that its only some puny moments spent with love and respect which the parents cherish…nothing more.. while for the elders, of continuously rediscovering themselves and of loving only those who deserve it (if you thought the climax is a limousine-stretched family photograph, you are thoroughly mistaken).
Baghban is thought-provoking family cinema as I would like to put it, and not just ’’yet-another’’ sob story.