Salman has excelled himself in Tubelight!

Close associate of Kabir Khan

Kabir Khan’s Tubelight, starring [tooltip id=”88b6af99531f838ed90aed058b7d870a”][tooltip id=”c1b465420d07c688942ed18eadfd9f92″ keyword_color=”#000000″ background_color=”#ffffff”][tooltip id=”4db8f5608d45f5de7881d9bce162f4bf”]Salman Khan[/tooltip][/tooltip][/tooltip], child artiste Matin Rey Tangu and Chinese actress Zhu Zhu, is releasing tomorrow and the buzz has been extremely positive for those who have watched it. The strong emotional content, Kabir’s storytelling and mastery over his craft as a director and Salman’s excellent performance, are known to be some of the highlights of the film. People who have watched the film include Kabir’s wife Mini Mathur, who is extremely honest about her husband’s work, his family and close associates.

While Mini declines to comment on Tubelight as she feels she’s too close to the film to talk about it, a close associate of Kabir says, “All those who have seen the film have loved it. They feel Salman has excelled himself in Tubelight. It is a highly emotive film and so much more. Tubelight is very fun, emotive in content, says something valid and at the same time Kabir has managed to get Salman to excel in his performance. When Mini and his assistant directors saw what he has done in Tubelight she was so stunned that she went up to him and asked him – ‘where were you all these years, man?!’ The film made everyone who has watched it, very emotional after they watched it. He always says one thing – a film has to engage you, whether it’s to make you laugh, cry or feel or do both, as there’s nothing worse than a film which doesn’t touch you at any level. A film has to resonate with you and Kabir has managed to do that with Tubelight – to get a lot of fun and yet have emotive content.”

According to the close associate, “There has also been pressure of another kind for Kabir – matching up to his last film Bajrangi Bhaijaan. There are two sides of a coin – if it’s the same people say you have replicated BB and if you try to do something different people will criticize that too saying ‘arre why did you upset that? It was working so well.’ It’s a complicated place to be for the filmmaker. What people need to know is that BB and Tubelight are two very different films even though it’s Kabir again with Salman and a child. That’s where the parallels need to completely stop as the films are saying completely different things and tapping at completely different paths and emotions. Everyone wants Tubelight to be the same and yet different. The problem is that everybody is trying to ascertain whether if it is another Bajrangi. How can it be another Bajrangi? People need to understand that film audiences are now evolving. None of those out-and-out commercial action films really work beyond a point. Everyone needs something to go back home with. You can’t just go and blindly watch a film. It has to mean something to you. To that extent, one always goes back home after watching Kabir’s films with a thought. He likes his film to speak for itself.”

The associate adds that Kabir’s family and close friends are extremely proud of the way the filmmaker has evolved in his craft today. “They praise his evolution as a filmmaker and admire his craft as he’s very sure of it. You can see a director’s evolution because Kabir also likes to mount his films on a real or political backdrop and tell intimate stories around that space. That’s his voice in commercial cinema where you are not just creating a backdrop which is fictional but setting a fictional story against a real life backdrop so there’s always logic and a certain sensibility. People have loved Tubelight because that is something unique to Kabir’s craft and style of filmmaking.”

The associate winds up saying that for Kabir every film is a baby in whom he invests his passion and love. “For an actor you have two releases in a year and you can move on to your next film but for a director a film takes two years – right from the time he’s writing it to the time he’s directing it. So his family and everyone associated with Kabir are invested in his films. It’s like two years of their lives are invested in Tubelight. Fingers, toes, ankles – all crossed now for the release!”