Jodhaa Akbar: The Big Budget Making of Mughal-E-Azam
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Genre: Drama
Director:Ashutosh Gowariker
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Sonu Sood, Kulbhushan Kharbanda
Storyline: A Mughal Emperor learns love and governance from Hindu Princess
Jodhaa
Bottomline: An old-fashioned big-budget prequel to Mughal-E-Azam
An epic, by definition, is all about gravity and magnitude.
No love story has ever made history without a high stakes conflict
involving separation and pain or celebration of the power of love.
Romeo-Juliet, Laila-Majnu, Devdas-Paro or Jack-Rose, they all had
their share of soaring highs that plummeted to the lowest of lows.
Admittedly, tragedies, by the nature of their genre, dictate the
dramatic direction of the South-bound character graphs and are better
equipped to make us feel the angst that love brings with it.
Yes, we do have to take into consideration that Ashutosh Gowariker
has chosen to tell us a love-story that has actually worked despite the
odds – religious differences – which in today’s context of frequent
communal violence, seem quite huge.
At a middle-class level: Yes, surely.
But even today, has religion really posed to be that huge a hurdle
in the higher rungs of the society? Ask the ruling Khans of the film
industry. The lifestyles of the rich and the famous transcend cultural
and religious boundaries. Ask Gauri, Reena, Kareena or Katrina, it is
no big deal.
Class has a huge role to play in love stories. The differences
between the rich and the poor are so deeply engrained in the psyche of
our people that it is difficult for the collective conscious of a
society to see the pangs of romance in the lives of a couple brought
into matrimony by parental arrangement. Our only interest in the rich
and famous is voyeuristic and not necessarily empathetic. We don’t
really care.
It’s not like they had an affair or painted the town red with their
romance or did anything even remotely scandalous. It’s not like one of
them was kidnapped and the other sent on a long never-ending exile.
It’s not that it was a love story that caused war or divided people.
Jodhaa-Akbar is a simple story of a married couple reconciling
differences in an arranged marriage set-up, that too in a fairytale
world, where the two dynasties need each other to flourish. Given that
the political context and nature of the romance is not even remotely
epic in scale to demand a 40-crore movie, it is commendable that
Ashutosh succeeds to the extent he has in delivering a three and a half
hour long movie to the multiplex-generation. Even if it reads more like
a coffee-table book than one that will make it to the shelf for serious
academic reference.
To his credit, Ashutosh and Haider Ali have scripted ‘Jodhaa Akbar’
as an insightful prequel to Mughal-E-Azam… Or what went into the making
of Akbar. Now, the making only records incidents, obstacles and hurdles
into what went into the production of a classic, it is not always a
story that can stand by itself.
Here was an emperor who married a Hindu princess, a woman who still
played a vital role in his life – a point illustrated when Jodhaabai
(in Asif’s classic) demands of her king that he does not slay her son.
Now, why would a Muslim Emperor who married a Hindu princess not
understand his son’s love for a courtesan and go to war with his own
son?
Ashutosh and Haider Ali give us a few answers. Akbar did not fall in
love with Jodhaa and then marry her. He fell in love after marrying
her. Even as a young man, Akbar considered principles higher than
family. Sample the scene where he does not object to Jodhaa publicly
being asked to taste the food she’s cooked for him first to ensure it
is safe. He lets his queen go through the awkwardness as required by
the law of the land and then announces he would eat from the same plate
as the Queen of Hindustan.
Thus, the legend of Akbar as a righteous king is further endorsed by
Ashutosh who does not seem to be interested in detail as much as Asif
was. Asif’s Akbar was a much more complex character who was torn
between his love for the country, his wife, his son, his principles and
the promises he had made.
Ashutosh’s Akbar is the eternal do-gooder, always adorned in shades
of white, yellow and the brighter colours of the spectrum and the
darker suits and armours are reserved for his cunning brother-in-law
Shareefuddin.
Given this black-and-white approach to storytelling, Ashutosh
could’ve further gone ahead with his artistic licence and dramatised
incidents or created fictional twists to make us see the miracle of
love and taken us on the rollercoaster of highs and lows.
For want of a serious conflict and drama (the greatest conflict in
the film is a silly misunderstanding that lasts all of the interval
block), Jodhaa Akbar ends up too shallow for a love story, the epic
proportions purely limited to how Akbar grew up to learn how to love,
understand and rule his people, thus setting the stage for
Mughal-E-Azam.
Hrithik and Aishwarya do plenty to reprise their Dhoom:2 duels and
yet it strangely seems to fit in here than there. Their chemistry and
onscreen persona alone make Jodhaa Akbar worth your movie ticket.
Rahman’s background music that usually touches maximum in the
Awesome-Meter when he scores for Ashutosh does seem to exaggerate mood
quite a bit. It doesn’t help that the lyrics of Khwaja Mere Khwaja go
off-sync and that the song picturisation often pales in comparison to
the grandeur of the music.
The biggest disappointment of the film is Nitin Chandrakant Desai’s
homework in the art department. We’re glad you didn’t label Agra Fort
as Agra Qila in Hindi right above the gateway, Mr.Desai.
Kiiran Deohans’ cinematography (if we overlook the visual-effecting
war sequences) and Tanishq’s jewellery-range make for a picture perfect
glossy on canvas but Ashutosh’s overly romanticised, hyper-indulgent
take on Jodhaa-Akbar has its moments of class that more than make up
for its lack of depth.
http://sudhishkamath.com/2008/02/20/jodhaa-akbar-the-big-budget-making-of-mughal-e-azam/Sudhi
