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jodhaa akbar
Jun. 6th, 2009 06:39 pmToday I finished watching the epic 3 1/2 hour Jodhaa Akbar. This film is about the Muslim 16th-century Mughal emperor Jalaluddin Akbar and his Hindu wife Jodhaa. Jalaluddin is played by hunk Hrithik Roshan, and Jodhaa is played by former beauty queen Aishwarya Rai.
I loved this film!
• The music is fantastic. It is by A.R. Rahman and a much better score than his slumpup. There are two absolutely fantastic songs but also all of the background score is stunning. Because the theme is Muslim/Hindu and because the setting is historical, there is a great epic quality and a mix of various religious music traditions here. If Rahman is great at anything, it's epic music!
• The two stars have a lot of chemistry! I am not usually a fan of Hrithik and Aishwarya but here they are fabulous. They act in a very restrained way, very few gestures, tiny movements of the muscles in the face or changes in voice to indicate temper and emotion. This restrained acting style suits the film extremely well because they are both caught up in court protocol plus they are not made to seem overly modern.
• This is Orientalism by the Orient! I love it. All that Roland Barthes says about the semiotics of 'the Roman curl' in Western cinema, is present here in India's very own romanticising and embellishing version of its own national past. Underneath the pomp and the glory and the ideology is actually, I discovered, a kernel of historical truth. Jalaluddin Akbar was indeed successful because he practised religious tolerance, and he even founded a mad personal religion (as these rulers tend to do, compare that pharao!) of his own (which the film glosses over, however, *g*).
The whole Islamicate architecture and costume and music thing is fascinating in the context of present-day India.
• The references to other movies are fascinating. The most famous film featuring Jalaluddin is Mughal-e-Azam from around 1960. This film casts Jalaluddin as the bad dad who is intolerant of his son Salim's love for a servant girl.
• The costumes are gorgeous. The on-location settings of forts and desert landscapes are stunning. And there are battle scenes! With ELEPHANTS!!
( some pics )
Best thing evah: Hrithik single-handedly tames a Wild Elephant! Rodeo Mughal-style!
• I could find no pic of an extraordinary scene that reverses everything that film-theory feminist Laura Mulvey ever said about women being there to-be-looked-at in films while men do the voyeuristic looking. In this scene, Aishwarya hides behind a veiled doorway and ogles a half-naked Hrithik doing sword practice on a rooftop. And if you haven't seen Hrithik's torso: ladies, the man is toned. The camera lingers lovingly over every muscle, every vein, every painted-on gleam of sweat, and then pans cunningly to his intoxicatingly made-up green eyes that peer dreamily out directly at YOU, the audience. We are in the position of Aishwarya, and he is the to-be-looked-at object of desire.
And if that weren't enough: then he starts suggestively fondling his "sword". At this point, I was about ready to expire on the sofa.
ETA: Screencaps of Hrithik/sword, courtesy of kathputli.
I loved this film!
• The music is fantastic. It is by A.R. Rahman and a much better score than his slumpup. There are two absolutely fantastic songs but also all of the background score is stunning. Because the theme is Muslim/Hindu and because the setting is historical, there is a great epic quality and a mix of various religious music traditions here. If Rahman is great at anything, it's epic music!
• The two stars have a lot of chemistry! I am not usually a fan of Hrithik and Aishwarya but here they are fabulous. They act in a very restrained way, very few gestures, tiny movements of the muscles in the face or changes in voice to indicate temper and emotion. This restrained acting style suits the film extremely well because they are both caught up in court protocol plus they are not made to seem overly modern.
• This is Orientalism by the Orient! I love it. All that Roland Barthes says about the semiotics of 'the Roman curl' in Western cinema, is present here in India's very own romanticising and embellishing version of its own national past. Underneath the pomp and the glory and the ideology is actually, I discovered, a kernel of historical truth. Jalaluddin Akbar was indeed successful because he practised religious tolerance, and he even founded a mad personal religion (as these rulers tend to do, compare that pharao!) of his own (which the film glosses over, however, *g*).
The whole Islamicate architecture and costume and music thing is fascinating in the context of present-day India.
• The references to other movies are fascinating. The most famous film featuring Jalaluddin is Mughal-e-Azam from around 1960. This film casts Jalaluddin as the bad dad who is intolerant of his son Salim's love for a servant girl.
• The costumes are gorgeous. The on-location settings of forts and desert landscapes are stunning. And there are battle scenes! With ELEPHANTS!!
( some pics )
Best thing evah: Hrithik single-handedly tames a Wild Elephant! Rodeo Mughal-style!
• I could find no pic of an extraordinary scene that reverses everything that film-theory feminist Laura Mulvey ever said about women being there to-be-looked-at in films while men do the voyeuristic looking. In this scene, Aishwarya hides behind a veiled doorway and ogles a half-naked Hrithik doing sword practice on a rooftop. And if you haven't seen Hrithik's torso: ladies, the man is toned. The camera lingers lovingly over every muscle, every vein, every painted-on gleam of sweat, and then pans cunningly to his intoxicatingly made-up green eyes that peer dreamily out directly at YOU, the audience. We are in the position of Aishwarya, and he is the to-be-looked-at object of desire.
And if that weren't enough: then he starts suggestively fondling his "sword". At this point, I was about ready to expire on the sofa.
ETA: Screencaps of Hrithik/sword, courtesy of kathputli.