Jodhaa Akbar - my take

Yesterday I saw Jodhaa Akbar, finally. I had got so many negative feedbacks before going to watch this. Still I knew that I would definitely be watching it and would definitely like it. And yes, I did like it.

I always loved to study the history of Rajputs and Mughals. My two years of experience as travel writer gave me more exposure to that when I wrote extensively on Delhi and Rajasthan. So, the fact of Akbar’s getting married to Jodhaa Bai of Amer, Akbar’s immense faith on Moinuddin Chisti of Ajmer (Akbar actually walked in bare feet from Agra to Ajmer Sharif), Akbar’s rebellious brother-in-law whom he couldn’t kill in order to keep his promise made to his sister, his roaming around in the streets in disguise to know his own people, etc. are not unknown to me. The history also says that Jodhabai was the mother of Jahangir and there’s a mahal in Fatehpur Sikri in her name, which was not shown in the movie though.

But I really liked the way Ashutosh Gowarikar did his thorough research. The forts, palaces are still there but they are now surrounded by more than one examples of modern era. It must have been a headache for the director to take the shot at proper angle in order to avoid the lamp posts, electric wires, hoardings and thousand other examples of modernization. And he never gave up.

The fight sequences are too good. The language was Hindi, but I felt like watching a Hollywood movie. No wonder, people who are listening to their moron friends and not going to watch the movie, are not even aware what they are missing.

But I must admit, I missed something in this movie too, the same way that I missed in Swades. It’s Amir Khan. I didn’t miss him on the screen, but I missed his intellect that bridges the gap between a class mind and a mass mind; just like it did it in Lagaan, Rang De Basanti and Tare Zameen Par. No wonder, Ashutosh Gowarikar is a wonderful director but somehow he misses to induce the ‘punch’ in his story telling that he finally misses out to catch the pulse of audience. Since the same story repeated with both of his post-Lagaan movies, probably we can guess whose head worked stronger behind the success of Lagaan.