Movie: Jodhaa Akbar
Jodhaa Akbar (Hindi: जोधा-अकबर, Urdu: جودھا اکبر) is a 16th century love story of a Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great and a Rajput (Hindu) princess Jodhaa. It is about a great Emperor who is tolerant towards a religion and culture which is not just alien to him, but is also the religion of the land he rules. Of course, how much of this is actually true is anybody’s guess. Apparently, the director of the movie, Ashutosh Gowarikar (the same director who made the Oscar nominated Lagaan) has admitted that 70 percent of the movie is fiction, which means it is very loosely based on history. What seems to be true is that Akbar married a Rajput princess… beyond that historians don’t seem to agree on anything much. They don’t even agree that it was princess Jodha who married Akbar. However what is true is that Akbar the Great had a tolerant attitude towards religion and encouraged religious debate. This has been well documented.
In any case, the love story doesn’t ring true, not if one thinks of it in a historical perspective. Akbar married a Rajput princess to form a political alliance, and therefore one wonders whether there was true love between the two. There probably wasn’t, knowing he had more than 300 other wives - it is believed though that more than one of these wives was Hindu. Interestingly, Akbar’s son Jehangir, who succeeded him, was the son of a Hindu mother, and while some say it was Jodha Bai, some say it was another Hindu princess.
The movie itself is amazing in scope…and manages to switch between the battlefield and court politics to the love scenes very smoothly. It casts thousands of characters…soldiers and ordinary people…and everyone in authentic costumes. The battlefield scenes, with elephants and costumes are impressive, although I wish they had been less gory.
This movie is a must-see, not because it is great cinema, but because it’s good, path breaking Indian cinema. I really enjoy watching historical films, even if they are mostly fiction based. We don’t get too many many good historical films. The other Indian-made historical epic I have liked was Mangal Pandey and it was excellent. This film falls somewhere in between, as Ashoka was mostly not enjoyable.
Historical films are important…they bring our past to life, and Jodha Akbar has done it with panache and style. True, the film could have done with tighter editing, and some more believability…but the music was also good. And I am not sure why all the fuss about this movie that went down in India, especially with initially release of the movie being banned by the States of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Uttarakhand (by the time you read this maybe the ban will be lifted) … they have to understand that this is movie only, and no is not being preached as a true part of Indian history.
The movie was around 3 hours and 20 minutes long and I enjoyed most of it.