Not many know that director Arjun Sablok started as an actor. He featured in Yash Chopra's Vijay and Aditya Chopra's Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, as one of Shah Rukh Khan's friends. He soon realised he wasn't cut out for acting.
Sablok made a confident debut in Na Tum Jaano Na Hum. "Hrithik gave all of himself to my film. My biggest reward was when Hrithik's mother (Pinky Roshan) called to say Na Tum Jaano Na Hum is not Hrithik's, Esha's, or Saif's film, but my film."
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Sablok described his maiden film as 'cotton-candy mixed with realism,' saying, "Hrithik said something very beautiful about Na Tum Jaano Na Hum: 'The audience will either feel the film's magic or they won't. I am the only director who signed Hrithik before the release of his debut Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai and didn't increase his role to suit his superstar status. I shot with Hrithik for only 72 days, dubbing included."
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A well-known ad filmmaker, Sablok revealed, "I wanted to make a slick and contemporary film that functioned within a theme and mood that celebrated deep-rooted Indian traditions. My film is inspired by my parents' story. My father lived in Ludhiana while my mother was from Pathankot (both in the Northern Indian state of Punjab). My mother forbade my father from meeting her. Their love grew through letters."
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Although Na Tum Jaano Na Hum was not a box-office success, it remains Hrithik Roshan's most restrained performance to date. 22 years later, this remains a very special film. Every frame, gesture, nuance, and twitch conveys a rich array of romantic emotions. Every shot has a reason, and every pause in the narrative takes us to a new plateau of elation.
For 2 hours and 40 minutes, we are transported into a realm of tremulous feelings and emotions, woven with the finest threads of human sentiments obtainable in the movie-making market. A perennial problem with ad filmmakers who turn their vision to cinema is that they’re consumed by the process of prettifying the picture.
Sablok avoids that ‘pretty’ fall. His aesthetic sensitivities go way beyond the surface level. If his film looks like a dream, then it feels like one too!
As a dreamer waiting for true love, Hrithik Roshan delivers what is arguably the best performance of his career. Sablok also works wonders with Esha Deol. In the opening montages, taken from the leading lady’s actual home-video collection, the female protagonist Esha is shown as an infant and toddler, to the accompaniment of the late Anand Bakshi’s lyric “Yeh betiyan to maaon ki raniyan hain” as the women of a large joint family dance in a rhapsodic celebration of womanhood. Esha (Esha Deol) is the incurable romantic who, like Madhuri Dixit in Yash Chopra’s Dil To Pagal Hai, believes there’s someone somewhere meant to be her life partner.
At the start of the film, Esha tells us, “All our relations in life are pre-destined, except one. There’s only one special person in our life whom we know nothing about until we meet him.”
So why go for compromised companionship? Idealizing the heart’s calling is as old as Adam and Eve… And Adam and Steve. Arjun Sablok’s film reminded us that true love can never age. It is gender-free and timeless.
For those wondering where filmmaker Arjun Sablok disappeared to after making the dreamlike romance Na Tum Jaano Na Hum, he divides his time between Mumbai and Canada, where his parents live.