Salaam Bombay!

Using Syed and shooting on actual locations in Bombay, director Mira Nair has been able to make a film that has the everyday, unforced reality of documentary, and yet the emotional power of great drama. “Salaam Bombay!” is one of the best films of the year.

Nair, to her credit, doesn't succumb to any special pleading, which deepens her film's impact. Time and again, you sense that she and her subjects come from a place that believes in film, as "Salaam, Bombay" specifies its world and compels us to inhabit it. [15 Sep 1988, p.68]

Bombay is a place of noise, restless movement and no privacy whatsover. It is squalor accepted as the natural order of things, and thus accommodated. Miss Nair does not share this fatalism, but in ''Salaam Bombay!'' she allows us to examine it without panic, and without patronizing it. She is a new film maker to watch.

The film is unsparingly gritty, but with a woman's tenderness it also grants the characters an occasional moment of grace.

What Salaam Bombay! thus lacks in polish it makes up for with deadpan authenticity. Watching the film is like being a witness to an event that is dark, intimate and frightening. There's something voyeuristic about the experience, and something deeply compelling as well. [17 Mar 1989, p.6]

On a first viewing of the film, I was instantly impressed by Nair's narrative skill: the speed and certitude with which she draws you into her world, and the dexterity with which she interleaves half-a-dozen different stories. The second time, her sentimental streak was more apparent and more annoying, but Salaam Bombay still convinces as a modest, uplifting movie. [26 Jan 1989, p.15]

Director Mira Nair indulges in some melodramatic explorations, however, dangerously verging on a romanticized Oriental tearjerker mood.