Jodha Akbar, Khoda Pahaad, Phoda Dimaag...

I was thinking of more expletives to express my frustration at this ridiculously lengthy movie, but I decided to restrain myself. At the intermission I told my friend who was accompanying me at the movie "This seems to be the longest day of my life and I can't believe that there are still 2 more hours to go". After more than 12 hours of roaming about the city for whatever reasons, another 3 and a half hours of Bollywood just killed my spirits for the day. I had a throbbing headache by the end of it and while the movie hall was just a few minutes' walk from home, I could no longer walk. In the cab back from the theatre to home, I was blessing the cab driver for the ride home. Yes, it is thaaaaat long.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a bad movie, it is just too long. It could have been easily cut short to a 120 - 150 minutes sweet romantic movie about love blossoming between a married couple, who were initially not in love. What killed the movie is the unnecessary wandering of the story along tangential sub-plots not core to the heart of the movie.

The basic premise of the movie is a very touching and not much heard of love story - the marriage (for administrative reasons) and the subsequent love affair between the Moghul Moslem King Akbar (played by Hrithik Roshan) and the Rajput Hindu Princess Jodhabai (played by Aishwarya Rai). The ice princess and the handsome prince meet again (post Dhoom 2) in this brand new effort by the director, Ashutosh Gowariker (Lagaan, Swades). At the very outset, it should be mentioned both the lead actors sizzle in this role which looks almost tailor-made for them. It's not that they have done their career-best acting in this movie, but both of them definitely look the part. They have also acted reasonably well, lending tremendous credence to their casting as Jodha and Akbar.

I would not get into the plot nitty-gritties, because truly there is not too much of a story to be told here. Not being a great history buff myself, I do not know how factually true or false the movie is. I would give Gowariker his freedom for artistic creativity, and move on. The alliance between Jodha and Akbar was due to administrative and political reasons. The Rajput King of Amer, Jodha's father (played by Khulbhushan Kharbanda) had to seek for protection from the great Moghul empire to prevent other warring forces from entering his kingdom. Also since the rest of the Rajput Kings refused to let any alliances happen between people from their kingdoms and the people of Amer, Jodha's Rajput King was left with no suitable princely alliance for Jodha. In what seemed to make political sense, Jodha's father promised Jodha's hand in marriage to King Akbar in return for his promise to protect his kingdom of Amer if there were any battles with the opposing camps. For obviously other political reasons which the story unfolds, Akbar decides to take up the offer. How the marriage of convenience actually blossoms into love, given the religious and cultural differences between the two in the 16th century royalty forms the crux of the story.

When the story sticks to this basic premise, it works. Maybe in those bits and pieces primarily when the movie focusses on the blossoming romance between its protagonists - their attraction towards each other, their little squabbles, their dilemmas, etc. The rest of the film seems weighed down by a pressing need to live up to the proclaimed scale. In what seems to be one of the major troubles of the movie making lore of the day, big-budget films are hyped to be big in every scale even while they are being written. That Gowariker fell prey to the sales pitch and expectations, and chose to follow them rather than his own inner vision when the idea for this movie might have sprung in his head, is unfortunate. Hence the romance works, but the history, seems to be getting laboriously in the way. We have long drawn battle sequences, directing which does not seem to be Gowariker's forte. For evidently cheaper labor wage reasons in India as compared to using CGI wizardry to create the battle forces, I feel Gowariker must have chosen to use real-life people in the battle sequences. And that brings to the screen one of the few cringeworthy sequences in the movie. I'm sure thousands of extras are impossible to control, but the battle sequences are childish to an embarassing extreme. While they are well captured on the camera (thanks to excellent cinematography by Kiran Deohans), it is poorly executed. It seemed like a rerun of the centuries old Ramayana days from Doordarshan - ill-equipped soldiers listlessly moving their swords in thin air while also restraining themselves. Robotic movements where the swords are swung first left, then right, then left again, and pow! one of the battling duo pumps the sword into the other and you throw some tomato sauce on the slit soldier's torso.

And that brings me back to my main gripe with this movie - its devastating lack of budgeting with the financial resources and with the longevity of the movie. Mr. Gowariker needs to be taught the art of editing, and the art of learning how to cut the crap from your reels. If it takes 3 hours of reel time in a 3 hr 28 minute movie for your hero to woo the heroine and merely get to touch her, I guess I am smarter than Emperor Akbar. I definitely take less than 3 hours in real life.

I could go on about the length of the movie, but there are of course many masterful strokes too in this movie. That Ms Rai is not a great actress at any level, is something most of us are aware of. If directed well, she can do a reasonably good job (case in example - Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Provoked). In what seems to be telling tall tales of Gowariker's cinematic prowess, he has given very few dialogues to be mouthed to Aishwarya. He has left her beautiful eyes to do all the talking. And Ms Rai is beautifully restrained in the movie, which works wonders for the movie. Hrithik Roshan also looks valiant and macho in the role of Akbar. He simply has to smoulder and brood in many scenes in the movie, which he does a good job of. He seems to be getting better with each of his newer movies that I see. The movie also has a great supporting cast. Raza Murad (as Emperor Akbar's advisor Khan Baba) is brilliant, just his vocal inflections and the deep baritone of his voice sounds like magic. Ila Arun (as Emperor Akbar's foster mother) almost hams it up, but also manages to steal the scenes from Aishwarya when the two of them are face-to-face. However I was terribly dissatisfied with the 3-4 scenes in which Suhasini Mulay (as Jodha's mother) was present. A brilliant actress that she is, she seems totally wasted in this role and seems to have an ineffective smile plastered on her face throughout.

What brings this movie to an entirely upper level is A R Rahman's lilting music. The songs are not too many and rightly placed in the movie, and while I believe when heard in isolation the songs might not seem that great, in the context of the movie and the way it is picturised the songs are simply beautiful. The beautiful 'Khwaja mere Khwaja' and the melodic 'Kehne ko jashne - bahara hai' really take your breath away. And 'Khwaja mere Khwaja' is indeed lyrically picturised as well. When the Sufi-esque tunes of this song reach heights, Gowariker pulls off a magical scene in which Hrithik enchanted by the music gets up from his throne and begins to sway to the tune, going round and round, lending a heavenly touch to the scene.

And once more I would like to mention the brilliant cinematography by Kiran Deohans in the movie, especially the palace's beautiful interiors and the breathtaking desert scenes, so also the warfront. Costumes by Neeta Lulla and Nitin Desai's sets also deserve ample praise. Being the period epic that it is, never once did the sets draw attention away from the main course of the movie (unlike the pointless monstrosities erected in SLB's Black and Saawariya).

The more I think about it, the more I feel that there are quite a few good scenes and many other positives in this movie, and I hate it lesser and lesser as I write more. Maybe I was just tired through a hectic day's activities that this long movie simply did not work for me anymore. How I wish Ashutosh had focussed on the romance between Jodha and Akbar, and not fallen into the big-budget trappings. That would truly have been a great movie. Sigh!