Jodha Akbar

**Had this review in my drafts for a while. Posting it out today.


After a long break saw a couple of movies and decided to post out a few reviews. Still in Yorkshire, battling the cold, and waiting to get back home.

Jodha Akbar:

A review can have several perspectives and I decided I should elucidate all perspectives rather than just write a review.

For the masses?

I guess the movie might lure the masses but does not have sufficient masala to get the auto rickshaw drivers to come


From a film makers perspective I am left completely confused wondering, what is it that Ashutosh set himself to make? A love story set in the 1700's? A tale to depict one of the most powerful rulers in history? A masala movie which has romance/thrills/villains/songs/dances and meant to entertain people? The movie failed to bring out its essence.A 4 hour love story is too long to handle and does not need too many facts built in which deviate you from the love story. The tale of Akbar the king did not need to have a romantic angle predominantly defocusing it. A masala movie needed a lot more. Some of the characters were built painstakingly and just left the story without much role to play. For eg Ila Arun, why did so much of the story focus on her and finally whoomph! she was just gone. Most of the supporting actors did not seem to play any major role in the movie and I was left wondering why 4 hours?? Now putting on my logical hat, I could not figure out how Aishwarya's brother was released and why did Akbar not make any attempts to explain the release as a mis-understanding when everything else had been sorted out? Why did dancers of pre-historic times have such harsh movements?

The movie had its positive moments. Ashutosh managed to build a soft subtle love between Akbar and Jodha. The sword fights, the torso scene and moments in the movie did a fantastic job of showing the king in love and in adding a classic touch to it. Hrithik as an actor performed well but possibly failed to fit the picture of Akbar in my mind. His grip on the character is amazing which was evident in the scenes where his minister was killed and he is angry, very angry something truly against the character of Akbar. I think he portrayed that scene really well where he got his brother thrown down on his head but at the same time could not pick up his sword and throw it down at him.He lacked to bring into his character the power that I had imagined for kings of those times.

A lot of people lauded the elephant taming scene. I liked the picturatization of it but it lacked thought and logic. What makes an elephant tame and was the ultimate goal just sitting on it? But like most people say, throw your logical hat out of the window when you go watch a movie.

All in all any movie that makes me look at my watch cannot be a classic and masterpiece. But if it still had me sitting, it surely had a story to say! Music from A.R Rehman was good but not a masterpiece. I dont find myself listening to these songs forever like the songs of Lagaan. Ashutosh has a lot of reflections of Lagaan in this movie, right from Amitabhs narrative to the characters chosen in the supporting role. The cinematography did not particularly have my attention. I thought the Mahal and the way it was shot did not seem grand( Sanjay Leela Bhansali is possibly to blame for my expectations here). There were places where the camera quality did not seem good. The choreography very average as well. The ajeeb-o-shaan shehenshah, I thought could have been picturised much better.Same goes with khwaja-ji. I think Sanjay might have made a grand love story from this epic. Anyways a decent watch, ok music and nice star cast.