One can’t take away the excitement from Saif Ali Khan‘s voice. The man has truly found his bearings a decade and a half since he began his career in Bollywood. Seeing a rise in his career, especially on this side of the century, Saif Ali Khan has indeed come a long way, what with his LOVE AAJ KAL putting him right up there in the superstar bracket.
“Well, LOVE AAJ KAL wasn’t really a straight forward love story as some people out there suggested. It was quite a nuanced experience and had to be done very carefully. In fact you have to watch the film quite closely to get a hang of so many things that are actually happening in the background”, says Saif when asked if working in LOVE AAJ KAL came naturally to him.
“In fact it was quite a challenge to act in the film as I had to get into the skin of this character that thinks and talks at the same time”, he laughs, “He is so verbose and talks non-stop. I still shudder when I remember those two page dialogue sheets that Imtiaz used to hand over to me. I used to exclaim- ‘Oh my God, here comes another chunk!’ See, normally there are one or two scenes in a film where an actor has to get into a monologue. However, in LOVE AAJ KAL there were four such major scenes. Also, the challenge was to make them entertaining rather than boring.”
Still, a section of audiences felt that he wasn’t able to pull off a younger role like this?
“See, the age of the character was not really relevant to LOVE AAJ KAL. This man could be in his mid-20s or early 30s; it didn’t quite matter. Of course, I accept all kind of criticism and if some felt that I didn’t really suit the character then fair enough. However, when I read in some reviews that I had played such characters before or Jai had nothing new to offer, then it saddened me. I guess that was too harsh and below the belt. The character that I played was quite complex and indeed very difficult to enact”, details Saif.
However, all of this shouldn’t matter much to Saif considering the fact that his film has taken a record breaking opening of 45 crores net in India alone. Add to that a stupendous response in overseas and the film is pretty much en route to the super hit status. With his feet firmly placed in the industry now even as a producer Saif would be pretty assured that he has many more successful films on his way. ‘Kurbaan’ and ‘Agent Vinod’ could well be a testimony to that!
