jodhaa akbar

sonal and me performed an experiment on jodhaa akbar yesterday. by placing our palms firmly in the middle of the screen we could block out hritik roshan from the whole film. the conclusion of this experiment was that the origin of the cleft on his chin was attributed to the force of the air against it as he neatly bisects every frame. this is the mark of a mughal emperor. symmetry. his wife meanwhile must stand slightly off center as her veil adds the ‘element of the diagonal’ to the frame. she must also show her fiery rajput blood by cooking food for her husband. some comic swordplay wearing a white veil will also do.

i have not seen a sillier film in a long time. the entire purpose of making it seems to be determined by the ambition to make an ‘epic’. with that tag comes the obligatory notion of ‘grandeur’. that must be the reason for choosing to tell this story too. after all it does allow you the opportunity to linger long on the forts and palaces of rajasthan and agra. not to forget the fact that you get to gawk at jewelry provided by the sponsor. not that there is anything really wrong with any of that. the problem is that the whole film is constructed entirely out of formulaic ‘epic’ shots with a narrative that has nowhere to go. some nonsense family feud is cooked up for dramatic purposes, plot developments are resolved in a jiffy and battle sequences follow. you wonder why four hours were necessary for such fluff. i guess length of film is another way in which one gives the impression of grandeur. it batters any possibl resistance from you. you are expected to believe you are watching an important film when all it really is, is a k serial running in a back to back special.

aishwarya and hritik provide all the necessary airhead glam for the film. she simpers delicately, he purses his lips and gives dignified smiles. he is quick to take his shirt off and thrust his sword around and she stand in the window fantasizing. his sherwani swirls gracefully around as he twirls dervish like after being hit by a holy light from the sky. he is saved from near death when a similar light rises behind bhagwan krishna after her tapasya. three men sing in rehmans voice, tribals dance in jhingalala fashion for akbar, and so much more nonsense that sonal and me were in hysterics throughout. we have been practicing bisecting space like akbar ever since.