Mira Nair

(On Cable TV, May 2021) Part of film education is going through good movies that you don’t like, and that’s a lot how I feel about Salaam Bombay! Despite its cheerful title and sun-drenched cinematography, not a whole lot about this film is fun or uplifting. It’s all about kids struggling to survive on the streets of the Indian metropolis, turning to crime and debauchery in order to scrounge the bare necessities of life. Clearly influenced by a neo-realistic approach, it’s utterly unsentimental in how it presents its characters and where it ends up. Salaam Bombay! was the debut feature film for writer-director Mira Nair and it’s an incredibly self-assured film — clearly in the tradition of earlier works of Indian neorealism, but distinctively hers as well. Still, I would be going too far by suggesting that I enjoyed watching it: I’m no big fan of neorealism in the first place, and the unrelenting grimness of the plot didn’t help. But I have this vaguely heretical notion that I don’t have to like a film to recognize its quality, and while Salaam Bombay! will never feature on any of my own lists of favourite films, it’s easy to understand how and why it was critically acclaimed back then, and why it’s still very highly regarded today.