Jodha-Akbar - a looong love story !!

Recently, 'Jodha Akbaar' was among the major releases from Bollywood. It was Ashutosh Gowarikar's 3rd venture on films. After Lagaan and Swades it was time for him to try with a periodical with Hrithik Roshan. I like A.G's previous two films. Although length is a major issue in his film, but Lagaan was quite justified to be long and Swades' theme was excellent.

Jodha Akbar ran into controversies regarding the lack of historical evidence of existence of Jodha Bai as Akbar's wife. There were demonstrations all over the country, specially in Rajasthan and the film was banned in two or three states. A.G fought back referring to his team of researchers and also sighted the example of 'Mughal-e-Azam' showcasing Jodha as Akbar's wife and still being in the epitome of success in Bollywood. I ran into Wiki quiet a number of times to verify 'Who is Jodha?'. The answer is : Jodha Bai's original name was Heera Kunwari and she was converted to Islam before her marriage with Akbar and got her new name Mariam-uz-Zamani. So most of the historical chronicles in Islam refers her by this name. She was indeed the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amer. She never used the name Jodha during her lifetime. According to Wiki, "Jodha" was used for Akbar's wife for the first time by Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod, in his book Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan.

But even if the above fact is to be believed the content of the film 'Jodha Akbar' can be debated, since in the story Jodha neither changes her religion nor her name, after marriage with Akbar. In fact, this marriage is referred in the history books as an example of Akbar's tolerant relgious policies and makes him so different from Aurangzeb. If Akbar could have only married Jodha after changing her religion, why is he so much hyped then being tolerant to other religion ?

Anyways, I think its a debate due to lack of resonable amount of references. So one can look into the movie as a historical fiction and can value it on its power of story telling and technicality ! Hence, lets move to the actual movie assuming the story is real.

A.G.'s Lagaan got the nomination for Academy Awards. Since then he has been in limelight. I believe this is one director who has the courage to script what he wants to present. But Jodha Akbar seemed to me as losing some tracks here and there. Ultimately I would like to ask the question what was the story basically about ? If it was a story of Akbar-Jodha love and its consequence to Akbar's reign, then I will definitely question about spending so much time in the begining showing Akbar's relation with Bairam Khan. After all nothing was told in that segment about Akbar's character which has any resemblance to his dealings with Jodha issue. I agree if you are scripting a historical you should mention briefly about the background. But I thought that was the reason A.G. had involved Amitabh Bachchan as the narrator. Thats what A.B did in Lagaan and also in the past in 'Shatranj ke Khiladi', his sole experience with Satyajit Ray. So one would wonder why A.G. did not use him properly and cut the very essential length of the film short.

I must say it was a long film. Personally, I am not against long films, if it is building up the story. In fact, I just watched the movie 'Once upon a time in America' casting Robert de Niro, which was way past 3 hours and still it was engrossing. But sometimes in Jodha Akbar I felt the length was getting too much and there were lose ends that could have been eliminated to make the story more coherent and tight. I am being too critical about this, since A.G. is one of the best directors we have in Bollywood and if he wants to compete with world cinema and be there in Oscar once again, I think these lose ends matter. I would not have been so critical if this movie was made by Vikram Bhatt or David Dhawan. Its quite an entertainer. So full marks in that category. Moreover, the gorgeous sets and beautiful Aishwarya steals the show. So I would say Jodha Akbar is good, but not as good as Lagaan or even Swades.

People might find my views slightly debatable, please comment. These are my views on the subject and after all its my blog .... :-) .. so enjoy reading.....

'Memento' is worth its name !

Yesterday I watched this movie 'Memento' directed by Christopher Nolan. Memento, which is derived from Jonathan Nolan's 'Memento Mori' features Guy Pierce in the prime role. First of all, I am not a big fan of Guy Pierce. In fact, he stars in 'LA Confidential' and sort of steals the stage from two of my favourite actors Crowe and Spacey.

But this movie is much more that Guy Pierce. He is not at all important, infact anyone could have acted in this role. Wiki says that director approached Brad Pitt for this role before. One could really ask 'Why?'. He should have charged him much more that Guy. In this film, even Jim Carrey could have carried out this ultra-complex character of Leonard Shelby. Shelby is an investigator for an insurance company, who is sufering from short-term memory loss ( a simpler term for 'anterograde amnesia'), but also invetigating about the second among the two guys involved with his wife's murder. So he devices a complicated system of using a polaroid camera and leaving important notes as tattoo all over his body so that when he loses memory he atleast can remind him about the mission he is on. But he is sometimes tricked by his close friend to do something which has nothing to do with his wife's murder. Teddy, a cop and friend of Leonard, reminds him that he has already killed his wife's both murderers. At this point, he decides to kill Teddy and keeps a note for himself that Teddy is indeed his wife's murderer. Finally, he kills Teddy and lives on in his never ending mission.

This may be the end of the story, but this is the begining of the movie. The craft of the movie is divided into two narrations one which runs in a forward direction(in black and white film) and the one in reverse direction ( in color version). But they both meet at the end. I must say I did not read the description of the movie in the wiki before I started to watch it. I also suggest it is fun in this way. Later on, I verified with wiki what I got out of the movie, and was more or less on the right track. This is a lovely movie for those who really loves to criticize technicality of film-making and adores experimentation with the way the story to be revealed. I liked this movie, but also had to watch the entire movie without skipping a scene to really get it. This was more of an assignment than just a real past-time. So, beware trespassers !

Couple of years back, I watched another lovely movie called 'Run Lola Run', that was also a theme movie of showing multiple lives n every instances. But if I start about this now it will be another episode.. so some other day...