In his career that has spanned over three decades now, Saif Ali Khan has ventured into different genres and mediums. Recently, he was seen in the intense drama Kartavya on Netflix where he played a cop. However, it’s his late ’90s and early 2000s romcoms like Hum Tum (2004) and Salaam Namaste (2005) that made the actor a household name, even getting him a National Film Award.
In recent years, Bollywood has been unable to churn a romcom that could gather such a popularity that Saif Ali Khan saw in his early years, and the actor has an interesting take on it. “I loved doing romcoms, but I feel they were like an anomaly in Indian cinema which might have even started and finished with me in a sense. I think romcoms are a failed experiment, although a beautiful one. There is something going deeper in the Indian society which is the want for a love story,” he says.
Watch the entire chat with Saif Ali Khan here:
The actor adds, “A romcom is technically this confused privileged guy who has everything on his plate, but is still confused, so people don’t really connect with it now. They wonder what is his problem. So, firstly things are not that bad, and secondly, it is something you shouldn’t do after a certain age. My wife (actor Kareena Kapoor Khan) said to me that things must be sorted now in your head, you can’t be playing [these confused man]. Ibrahim (Ali Khan, actor-son)should do more of it now, it’s our family business (laughs).”
But Saif is open to romancing on screen more: “I loved those movies and they mean a lot to me. I had a great time working on them. I would love to do a love story, or even a comedy that ends in romance. Now, I feel I can do another romcom, there is still one there in me (laughs).”
Saif also notes the shift in storytelling in the action genre towards a more violent approach, and he feels it’s a reflection of the time we are living in. “Why that is happening, I don’t know but it is happening, and for that, there is a more intense kind of narration required. You can look at a film and tell what time or era it is from. I think that’s the need and that’s what’s happening now. The same story is being told in a much more intense narration now. It’s not just enough to tell the story, it has to shake you up, punch you a bit and sometimes maybe even put you off,” he says.
Elaborating further, Saif says, “Even violence is an art form and it has to connect and we have to feel it. If it’s just gratuitous, you just want to shut your eyes. It’s been happening with a lot of films lately that you want to shut your eyes but that’s part of the experience. There’s always a need for that in its expression and people enjoy watching that and it is cathartic in some way for them. People feel strongly about some things and if you have to show some revenge or punishment, you need to be aware that the bar is now somewhere else. And sometimes it might offend. There is a more deeper and intense portrayal today than what it was maybe 10-15 years ago. Also, these things are happening, things are violent and some people show that in a very interesting way.”