Baghban

Raj Malhotra worked forty years at a bank and is retiring. He and his wife Pooja raised four sons; they educated them, married them off and set them up in their own lives. After retirement the couple think of moving in with their sons. The sons meet and decide: their mother and father will stay separately. The mother in one son's house, the father in another's. After six months they will swap. Raj and Pooja are parted for the first time in forty years. Neither is wanted in either house. Raj starts writing letters. Ravi Chopra directs. Amitabh Bachchan plays Raj and Hema Malini plays Pooja; Salman Khan and Mahima Chaudhry are in the cast. The language is Hindi. The matter it treats is care in old age; the film takes the breaking up of the traditional family order in India as its direct subject. The character Salman Khan plays is an adopted son and forms the narrative's opposite pole. It took a strong result at the box office and opened a wide argument through its subject. Its last section is built around a book and a speech in a hall; the narrative states its argument outright there. Aadesh Shrivastava wrote the music and the songs are tied to the story. Its limit is method; the narrative keeps the emotional pressure very high and draws the sons as one dimensional. Another limit is length; the film is long and its second half repeats. Who it is for: viewers who like Indian family drama and Amitabh Bachchan. Who it is not for: the melodrama is very strong, the characters are types, and the argument didactic.