Mira Nair brings a documentarian’s sensibility to her texturally wealthy narrative function debut, Salaam Bombay! On the middle of the movie is 10-year-old Krishna (Shafiq Syed), who, upon arriving in Bombay (now Mumbai), rapidly learns that those that reside within the slums of the town adhere to a dog-eat-dog mindset, as a result of surviving right here goes hand in hand with taking some awfully mighty exhausting knocks.
Krishna, whom everybody calls Chaipau, works odd jobs, together with serving tea to pimps, intercourse staff, and drug sellers, with the hopes of getting again to his village. Salaam Bombay! focuses on the relationships that he forges inside this atmosphere, together with with an older heroin addict and father determine, Chillum (Raghubir Yadav), who nags him for cash to feed his insatiable behavior. Simply because the youthful Manju (Hansa Vithal)—daughter of the neighborhood’s strongest pimp and drug seller, Baba (Nana Patekar)—nurses a crush on our hero, Krishna pines for Solasaal (Chanda Sharma), a teenaged sufferer of intercourse trafficking.
Via these secondary characters, a window is opened into the seedy pockets of a metropolis, however regardless of its graphic depiction of life within the slums of Bombay, the movie doesn’t quantity to poverty porn. Nair, working from a script by Sooni Taraporevala, doesn’t look after ethical judgment, nor does she got down to make anybody appear to be a pure villain. Even Baba, for all his cruelty and hypocrisy, displays moments of tenderness towards his spouse, daughter, and Solasaal.
Given how propulsive Salaam Bombay! is for therefore lengthy, it feels as if it involves a screeching halt as soon as Krishna will get despatched to a juvenile detention middle. However whilst its initially free narrative takes on a extra acquainted form, Nair’s movie by no means feels lower than authentically alive. It offers a young, intimate have a look at the tough realities of poverty in Bombay with out ever caving to low-cost sentimentality, neither reveling within the nastiness of what’s heaped upon younger Krishna throughout his perilous journey nor coddling its viewers by offering him and others a simple manner out.
Picture/Sound
The 4K digital restoration that the Criterion Collection has transferred includes a sharp picture with sturdy depth, permitting each visible element within the gritty cityscape, from cracks in buildings to the textures of materials, to return by way of with the utmost readability. Pores and skin tones and colours are naturalistic, with the brighter splashes of shade in a lot of the clothes rendered vibrantly and with nice accuracy. The uncompressed soundtrack is strong, properly balancing the fixed background noise of individuals and site visitors with the dialogue by the movie’s precept gamers.
Extras
Within the first of two archival audio commentaries from 2003, Mira Nair talks about getting her begin making cinéma vérité documentaries, her collaboration with screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, and, most curiously, the appearing workshop used to coach her non-professional actors. Within the second monitor, director of pictures Sandi Sissel will get into the technical nuts and bolts of the movie’s cinematography, detailing what number of photographs and the overall look of the movie had been achieved, offering an actual behind-the-scenes have a look at her course of.
The lone new additional on the disc is a dialog between Nair and composer L. Subramaniam, who reminisce about engaged on their first fiction function and focus on the method of conceiving of and refining the rating. There are additionally a handful of brief interviews from 2003 with Taraporevala, who delves into her analysis course of and fine-tuning her script, and several other of the actors, who share some fond reminiscences and speak in regards to the voice and appearing coaching they obtained. Rounding out the bundle is a foldout booklet with an essay by movie critic Devika Girish that explores how the movie blurs the boundary between documentary and narrative.
General
The Criterion Collection has outfitted Mira Nair’s narrative function debut with a spiffy new switch and a strong slate of informative extras.
Rating:
Solid: Shafiq Syed, Hansa Vithal, Chanda Sharma, Nana Patekar, Raghubir Yadav, Aneeta Kanwar, Raju Barnad Director: Mira Nair Screenwriter: Sooni Taraporevala Distributor: The Criterion Collection Operating Time: 114 min Ranking: NR Yr: 1988 Launch Date: December 9, 2025 Purchase: Video
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