“Welcome To Sajjanpur” is enormously high on simplicity.

Film: “Welcome to Sajjanpur”; Cast: Shreyas Talpade, Amrita Rao, Ravi Kishan, Rajeshwari Sachdeva, Ravi Jhankal, Ila Arun, Divya Dutta, Yashpal Sharma; Director: Shyam Benegal; Rating: *** ½
Welcome to Shyam Benegal’s world of enchanting social comment. Every character in this village of the damned, the doomed and remarkably redeemed is a stereotype. And yet, miraculously, every character is an individual, eccentric, quirky, blemished and yet so full of vitality vigour and energy that you wonder which came first…life, or life as seen through the eyes of Benegal’s camera of innocence, candour and credibility.
This isn’t Benegal’s first broadly-designed, warmly-panoramic ensemble film. Earlier, the prolific director excelled in depicting the life of a specific community in “Mandi” and “Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda” as a microcosm of a larger reality.
“Welcome To Sajjanpur” is enormously high on simplicity. To be simple in cinema is the most difficult thing in the world - especially when you attempt a film that subsumes an entire ethos of socio-political and cultural ideas on a rural society in tricky, torrential transition from blind faith to globalisation.