Out of the Saif zone

With Sartaj Singh finding the target audience, Saif Ali Khan is back in business. Has he carried the good form to Baazaar? Read on...

Taking the bull by the horns: Saif Ali Khan’s next challenge is “Taanaji” where again he is exploring shades of grey

Sometimes it becomes hard to separate art from the artist. While watching Sartaj Singh grapple with the big bad world in Netflix’s Sacred Games , one felt Saif Ali Khan was living his own frustration on screen. One of the best performances of his career, the series happened to him at a time when he was trying to break free from his romc com guy template without much box office success. After duds like Humshakals and Happy Ending, he was impressive in Rangoon and Chef but the films didn’t get much traction. In fact, last October during a conversation with this journalist he said that he had made a course correction and was feeling artistic on the sets all over again. “I am glad I was not talking rubbish,” Saif grins as we settle for a quick chat ahead of the release of Baazaar.

Did the downturn help him in understanding Sartaj better? As like the doughty police officer, Saif was trying hard without much success. “No, in that case only unsuccessful actors would be stars,” he exclaims. But then as Saif is known to be alive to critique, he quickly adds, “If you feel so, maybe. For me, you have to come from a place of confidence and energy to project anything. You cannot come from a place of insecurity to project insecurity or come from depression to project depression. You need energy and that comes from confidence.” But then actors also have a sub-conscious mind. “But you can’t play sub-conscience. This is something what the audience notices, which is great. Whatever, as long as it is working. But for me, it was not a conscious thing. The writers didn’t tell me either.”

What he was conscious about was that he wanted to play the best possible Sardar. “I wanted Punjabis to be proud of the character. So I practised my Punjabi and worked on my body language. Over the years, I have observed a lot of Punjabis around me. And I am one of those actors who are aware of their surroundings. It was a nice opportunity to perform on a global platform, not in a Hindi film style but something more international.”

This week he is playing a Gujarati tycoon, and Saif says, once again, he is not playing a Gujarati just for the sake of it. “This is my thing. If you are playing a character that requires peculiarities of a specific region, they should come across as normal and not as something put on.” Shakun Kothari, he says, is a blend of many Indian business personalities that he has observed. “I watched the videos of these people addressing business forums. An Indian businessman can look intelligent,” he chuckles.

Set against the politics of the stock market,

Baazaar , he says, the film is about greed. “It is about what money means to different people.” Over the years, Hindi films don’t celebrate money. It has taken a long time for writers to create an Indian version of the wolves found on

Wall Street . “Films are a reflection of society and we are changing as a society. We are also becoming a little more honest as filmmakers. Earlier we were selling ideas which should be practised. Now we are talking about things which are being followed. It is getting real...no realistic.

Bigg Boss is real!” remarks Saif, with tongue in cheek.

It is not that Saif didn’t try to break the lover boy image. “Some impressions are hard to break but I don’t think I stand for that anymore.” His critics often fail to take into account Omkara, Being Cyrus and Aarakshan . “One should try even more. Aarakshan was a failure, I guess. In retrospect, I feel I should have experimented with hair and make-up. The idea of me playing a Scheduled Caste guy was anyway a shaky concept in terms of my public perception. I don’t think we took it as seriously as we should have,” he muses.

This, he says, emanates from the confusion over the target audience. “We have the talent but sometimes we are not clear what market we are selling to. Now web space is a clear market so we can get as international as we want to... no compromises.”

Having said that, Saif adds that things are changing on the Bollywood film set as well. “It is pretty much the same and I am happy it is happening. In Baazaar, I found the production designer fussing over the amount of ghee in the food, the kind of katoris on the table and the jewellery of Chitrangada(Singh). This gives confidence. However, when it comes to acting, the kind of underplay you can achieve in a web series is still not possible in mainstream films. Sometimes, a simple act of taking off the glasses can add to the meaning....”Well, more power to Sartaj as Saif promises that he will be back.