Indian Movies Thread V

[ramana]

Thanks Sridhar. Here it is. My Hindu mind gives me an open mind to look for the truth. The movie has mixed messages. And is a sleeper.

<!--QuoteBegin-"ramana"+-->QUOTE("ramana")<!--QuoteEBegin-->Two stories from Deccan Chronicle, 16 Feb 2008

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Flawed epic worth a watch


Jodhaa Akbar
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai, Ila Arun and others
Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
Rating: ***

When you watch the CGI-assisted battle scenes in Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar, you marvel at the work done by K.Asif and Sohrab Modi, who made their historical masterpieces without such modern-day conveniences. The many shortcomings of Jodhaa Akbar — the director’s ambition, courage and passion not being among them — only remind you of the fact that films are made or broken on the written page, not on the computer.

<b>Jodhaa Akbar has the grandeur a 40-crore budget can buy, but why does it still leave the fan of the historical/costume drama cold?</b> Because it doesn’t have a single scene that brings tears to the eyes, not a single confrontation that sets the pulse racing, not a line that will go down in movie history, not a song that will be hummed half a century later. like Pyar kiya to darna kya from Mughal-e-Azam still is.

<b>It has a hero like Emperor Akbar, but its villains are puny;</b> its supporting cast has no teeth and the plot teeters from romance to court intrigues without figuring out where it is headed. <b>The fictional love story between Akbar (Hrithik Roshan) and Jodhaa (Aishwarya Rai) makes the screen light up with the beauty of the lead pair and the chemistry they share. No other actor today, could have brought the grace dignity and gravity to the character of a prince that Roshan does —even though he is made to perform needless ‘items’ like an elephant fight and a bare-bodied sword practice scene for the benefit of the breathless queen (if only he had allowed his hair to be styled according to 16th century styles when layers were not in!). Aishwarya Rai looks gorgeous in period costume and performs well too.</b>

<b>You appreciate Gowariker’s feminist interpretation of Jodhaa, though it was not very likely that a Rajput princess could, in those times, lay down conditions before marrying the Emperor, refuse to let him touch her, or have a sword-fight with him to determine whether she would live with him or leave him!</b>

Some scenes of Akbar’s wooing of Jodhaa have a sweet tenderness — like the one where he learns what to do when an aarti is placed before him, or eats from her platter. And you wait for these bits impatiently, while Akbar’s rivals and enemies pop up with exasperating regularity — from relatives eyeing the throne, to religious leaders whining about his Hindu wife, to his old wet nurse (Ila Arun) cooking up her own reptilian plots in the zenana.

Even after the love story has come to a nice romantic conclusion, when Jodhaa comes back to Akbar to consummate the marriage, Gowariker goes in for another climax so that a wicked brother-in-law (Nikitin Dheer) can be dealt with. And he pauses to let the character of Jodhaa’s beloved cousin Sujamal (Sonu Sood) take his time to die, as forgotten misunderstandings are cleared.

With all the attention on authentic costumes and sets (still, the machine stitching on drapes shows), there are lapses — like characters reaching over vast distances in no time, when they had to travel on horseback. The angry populace complaining of high prices and misrule by the Emperor’s officials, bursting into dance (superbly choreographed) when Akbar abolishes a tax on pilgrimage, which he didn’t even know was levied! Finally, cribs about the film being too long are justified — in putting together his labour of love, Gowariker did let himself get self-indulgent.

<b>For a patient viewer, Jodhaa Akbar is watchable, but it never achieves the level of a tour de force. Still, his valour can be applauded — better to have achieved a flawed epic, than never to have attempted one.</b> After all, who would have predicted that a period film about a rustic cricket team would make it to the Oscars, until he made Lagaan?

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and

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By Bijoy Bharathan


Mankind’s fascination with womankind, especially the ones whose histories are embroiled in a veil of murkiness seems to be a never-ending subject of contemplation. Every generation has a tale of mystery to pass on to its successive generation. In most cases, they rage on for centuries together – unsolved, debated, hypothecated and reviewed by high brow historians, academicians and researchers of all kinds.

Jodhaa Akbar, Ashutosh Gowariker’s big-screen adaptation of the love story that blossomed from the relationship between one of India’s greatest Mughal emperors–Akbar and his beloved wife Jodhaa has now sparked a renewed interest in the history of the Mughal period. But really, who was Jodhaa? And how instrumental was she in shaping the destiny of this nation of ours? Did she even exist in the first place or was she just the figment of a collective imagination spawned through centuries-old folklore?

<b>The common perception is that Jodhaa was a Rajput princess who was married off to Akbar as part of an ‘alliance-founding’ exercise between the Rajput and Mughal communities.</b> But then, the historical accuracy of this ‘fact’ stands in question. Historians and academicians say that the very existence of a person called Jodhaa is highly questionable.

The renowned historian <b>Irfan Habib,</b> a Padma Bhushan awardee, former chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London and Professor Emeritus at Aligarh Muslim University, who has authored several books and research papers, many of them pertaining to the history of the Mughals, voices his opinion about the controversial Rajput princess.

He says, <b>"According to the Akbarnama, which is a biography of the emperor, Akbar married the eldest daughter of Raja Bharmal (a Rajput king) of Amber in 1561. But interestingly, nowhere in the historical manuscript is a single mention of the name of this princess. The Akbarnama does not even describe any significant power that this princess had supposedly exerted on him. The fact is that there is also no reference to a woman named Jodhaa in it."</b>

<i>{Does Akbarnamah name any wife of Akbar? Isn't it un-Islamic to name women or consorts of Muslim rulers. And dont forget irfan Habib's father Mohammed Habib started the project of rewriting hisotry to show Delhi as the center of Muslim power for all times. So he is hardly a 'fair' expert!}[/i


Such revelations are in stark contrast to how the filmmakers of Jodhaa Akbar perceive the couple’s relationship to be. Hyder Ali, who wrote the film’s screenplay along with Ashutosh says, "We spent hundreds of man-hours doing our homework before embarking on a cinematic quest as monumental as this. We employed several researchers and historians of repute and got our facts down to a tee and we have made every attempt to stay as true to the historical aspects of the story as possible. In fact, the film has been made with the approval of the living descendants of the Rajput emperors who have had absolutely no qualms about the way their princess has been depicted on screen."

The process of tracing a royal family tree might seem like a daunting task. But it gets even more challenging when one considers the numerous alliances that emperors had with princesses and concubines. As it was customary in those days, emperors were used to having harems that housed hundreds, at times even thousands of women, several of them who bore successors for the emperor. <b>Isn’t it possible that Jodhaa was just one among Akbar’s many wives? What makes her so special in order to be mentioned alongide Akbar in the annals of civilisation?</b>

[i]{Ashutosh gowariker has depicted that the first Mughal Empress was a practicing Hindu. Thats what is rubbing the scholars wrong way.}</i>

Conflicting viewpoints emerge as Irfan says that according to some accounts, the authenticity of which still stands disputed, a Persian traveller who visited India somewhere around the year 1563 recorded in his memoirs that Akbar was very much influenced by a Brahmin woman, who he eventually married and it was she who gave him the impetus to abolish slavery.

Harbans Mukhia, a retired professor of medieval history from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi says, "Actually, it is very doubtful if Akbar really had a wife called Jodhaa. In the light of the fact that women in those days were named according to the place they came from, why would a woman from Amber be named as Jodhaa which would a typical name for a lady who hails from Jodhpur. In fact, I believe that this entire myth regarding Jodhaa is a part of folklore, which was concocted over the years. The legend grew somewhere around the late 19th and early 20th century."

Harbans further elaborates saying, "Akbar was considered to be very progressive about the rights of women with regards to ownership of paternal or ancestral properties, inheritance, etc., but few people know about his conservatism when it came to his several Rajput wives and the women in his family (including his sisters and female relatives). He never let any of them keep their original first names. The reason was that Akbar believed that a woman was defined by her name and that her chastity and name was of utmost importance. He did not want any woman related to him being defiled because of an impure thought that may have crept into the minds of men with respect to these women. In a way – he just erased their identities in order to protect them. So it’s just a matter of contention when it comes to Jodhaa as well. For all we know it could be the rechristened name of any one of his wives." But the question of Jodhaa’s origin has been doing the rounds since the time Ashutosh’s historical romance was announced for the first time. The film, which is touted to be one of this year’s biggest Bollywood releases found itself in the middle of a controversy that has its roots in the very place where the film’s female protagonist hailed from – Rajasthan. Several members of the Rajput community from the state have voiced their protest against the film. <b>According to them, Jodhaabai (Jodhaa for short) was Akbar’s daughter-in-law, who was married to Akbar’s son Salim ‘and not Akbar himself as portrayed in the film.’</b>

<i>{Yes there are books that point out that Noorjehan was upset with her rival Jodah who was Salim's first wife and was the mother of the successors to Salim}</i>

Ajit Singh Mamdoli, the state president of Sri Rajput Karni Sena, an organization based in Rajasthan, which is in staunch opposition to the film says, "We have documented historical evidence to prove that Jodhaa was Salim’s wife and not Akbar’s. This is even mentioned in the Class 11 history textbooks of the CBSE syllabus. We will shortly hold a national press conference to inform the public about the inaccurate depiction of history as shown in the film and we will ensure that the film is not screened in Rajasthan."

He adds, "In fact in the period depicted in the film, Rajput women were used to wearing purdah or veils and they were married to kings in accordance to a political agreement or pact, which is negated by the film through its romantic angle. Apart from this, the film depicts Jodhaa and Akbar, (who are basically a daughter-in-law and a father-in-law) in love with each other, which is an absolute distortion of historical facts."

<i>{ I saw the film. The marriage was political alliance. The romance comes after the marriage. I think the commentator is mixing things up. However AG aslo showed some scenes which will make many a syncretic chatterati scared- the Naqshbandis sufie singing Khwaja Khawja, Bairam Khan role in executing captive prisoners, the utter divisive role of the ulema, the utter debased world view of Raja Bharmal and his wife who steal a kingdom and to preserve their rights give thier daughter to the Mughal}</i>


Of course, it’s a common practice among filmmakers to take creative liberties in order to dramatise a historical legend onscreen. Hyder Ali says, "The film has shown Jodhaa and Akbar in a romantic light which is necessitated by the script. It is a mix of both historical and fictional elements, which we have clarified before. Even the climax of the film is a work of fiction. So there is no need to kick up a fuss over this."

A similar sentiment is echoed by Dashrath Singh Baradva, who plays the role of Maharana Pratap Singh in the film and in real life, is associated with the Rajput Yuva Morcha. He says, "There are several members of Rajput families, who have acted in this film along with me. None of us have any objections regarding the depiction of Jodhaa. The entire brouhaha has erupted out of political animosity between some Rajput factions."

Which brings us to the question of animosity – <b>Is there a larger canvas that Ashutosh is trying to paint, a bigger story that he’s trying to tell? </b>Hyder Ali says, "The film aims at conveying the message that religion is not above humanity. It’s about how two different cultures came together having ignored communal differences. <b>If an emperor could do it in that age, why can’t we do it now?"</b>
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The message is from the narrator who is Amitabh Bacchan. He propagates the syncretic nature of Akbar and shows how different he was from the earlier riff raff and the latter bigots. The film shows the concept of zawabit(The ruler shall make rules) that I was writing about. the biggest H&D is that the first real Mughal Empress was instrumental in Akbar's world view. One eyeopener is the Sufi influence as shown by the headgear and the whirling dervish dance after the wedding. There isn't the hardline Wahabi/Deobandi style of the latter colonial era.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

added: The Naqshbandi headgear and the dervish dance shows that the Mughals are Turks and not Mongols. After the Mongol razing of Baghdad, its the Sufis who spread the message of Allah. And the Naqshbandis were the foremost per Bernard Lewis.