Ok, let me start by saying that I went in to watch Jodhaa-Akbar fully prepared to fall in love with the historical epic. Ashutosh Gowariker, after all, does have a rather splendid body of work to impress and excite people with. You don't get nominated for an Oscar for nothing. And the premise this time seemed so perfectly grandiose - a sweeping love story set in the royally magnificent days of Mughal Shehenshahs and phrases like "Takh Liya!" - what more could one ask for? Everything seemed so right about this movie that, much as in the case of Sanjay Bhansali's Black, people were talking about the Oscar prospects of the movie months before its release. Sadly, they spoke too soon.
I can't really give the exact reason why the movie failed to impress me. The plot construction and character development are more than adequate, the acting is top-notch and the painstaking attention to detail evident throughout the movie is truly commendable. I guess it's just one of those movies which you can brush off with a comment like, "but it had no soul!". And as snobbish as that sounds, I think it's spot on. Gowariker seems to have got a little lost amid all the splendor and the fancy Urdu. The cornerstone of the movie, the fundamentally vulnerable bond between Emperor Akbar and the Rajput princess Jodhaa simply doesn't create an impact as strong as one would have expected in a larger-than-life saga such as this. As contradictory as this may sound, Gowariker had an excellent premise to cut his teeth into, but not enough meat in the central plot to chew on. A cinematic head-scratcher, I'm sure, that not many filmmakers have to deal with.
Historically speaking the movie seems well-researched (for a wikipedia-educated person anyway), though it is certainly questionable whether Akbar would have spent so much time and energy wooing the politically-bonded Jodhaa when he reportedly had over a 100 wives to worry about. The military conquests and political travails of Akbar are intricately woven into the plot in an efficient enough way so that no sub-plot seems out of place or unnecessary. When I say 'sub-plots', of course, I don't include the overly long-drawn sequences of grief and melodrama suffered by just about everyone in the movie, because there sure are plenty of 'unnecessary' instances of those. The movie trundles along at a luxuriously leisurely pace, and while that is forgivable for a period drama, one does wish that Mr. Gowariker hadn't wasted so much time in the first half just trying to establish the proceedings. And the battle scenes. How do I put it? When I first heard about the lavish budget and use of CGI in the film I began to dare to hope that for once, Bollywood would turn out something revolutionary in the purely technical realm of live action. All that came crashing down the moment the Battle of Panipat came on. The sequence is a seriously ridiculous piece of trash, and I was almost in tears by the end of it. Thankfully, however, the quality of the battle scenes improves dramatically as the film moves on (thanks in no small part to the fact that all the subsequent battles aren't really full-fledged, all-out wars but more of small-scale, half-hearted negotiation-cum-conflicts). The final one-on-one fight between Akbar and his principle nemesis bears striking resemblance to the Brad Pitt-Eric Bana fight in Troy, and though it isn't quite as good as the Troy one, it is reasonably well done. The swordfight between Jodhaa and Akbar, however, scores over all the other fight sequences, and considering how much the cinematography and stunt direction of this movie were being talked up, that's a little sad.
The movie's dialogue is considerably difficult to understand, specially since the actors simply refuse to pronounce Urdu the way that it is supposed to be pronounced. And sorry, but there just aren't enough memorable lines for a movie of such epic proportions. The music by A.R. Rahman is fantastic as usual, particularly the Azeem-O-Shaan Shehenshah track, which, in one word, is awesome. As for the acting, I can confidently say that Hrithik Roshan has matured into a truly marvellous actor - he brings out every confused and passionate facet of an emperor with such incredible intensity that I repeatedly had to hit myself on the head for ever having doubted his capabilities as an actor. That said, however, I could never quite shake off the lingering feeling that Hrithik just didn't fit the role of Akbar. He looks - how do I put it? - far too - chiselled? and a little, um, puny, for a king. If you're laughing at me for calling the man with probably the best body in Bollywood 'puny', you ought to take a look at the size of the guy who plays his brother-in-law. Aishwarya Rai is perfectly cast as the headstrong woman-who-would-be-queen, and manages to look like an exquisite dream even when she's straining every nerve trying to make those sobs sound genuine (I have to say I admire her immensely for the effort she puts into acting). The rest are all sidekicks who get sidelined repeatedly during the course of the stuttering romance between these two, though it must be said that Sonu Sood does surprise you with a competent performance.
The cinematography, I'll make no bones about this, is disappointing. The imposing forts and the sets look grand, I'll agree, but I always felt like there was something missing, something that Gowariker forgot to add when taking all those sweeping shots of architectural marvels. There was no majesty in the art direction, no sense of awe-inspiring grandeur. The only times the movie looked anything close to a visual spectacle were when the camera focussed on Ms Rai. This, however, is a completely subjective opinion; I'm sure there are lots of people out there who were totally taken in by the sets and the photography. It's just that I wasn't. It's one of those things. And the movie's length! God, did no one on the sets of the movie remember to carry a watch? 3 hours 45 minutes is WAY too long for ANY kind of movie. One thing's for sure, this film is not going to win any awards for editing.
Gowariker'e last movie, Swades (which I personally loved), was widely criticized for being too much like a documentary and for lacking heart and entertainment value. I think that sort of criticism is much more appropriate for Jodhaa-Akbar. The movie has all the right intentions and the means to be going on with, but it simply fails to ignite the emotions of the viewer. It almost looks a little robotic - some of the lines and sequences, like the one where Akbar abolishes the jizyah tax, come off as downright mechanical. Not a major fault on the part of the director, by any means, but sometimes this sort of thing stops an ambitious and well-made project from becoming a great movie. Swades was a great movie. So was Asoka, if you're talking about historical epics. Not so Jodhaa-Akbar.
