It’s been a long time since I last wrote and sorry for keeping some of you waiting. School work had been getting the better off me.

I saw Jodhaa Akbar (JA) a few days back and I absolutely had to had to write about it.

JA is the first hindi film that I have seen this year because frankly there was nothing in the theaters that I would have wanted to spend $10 for.

To whet my film appetite, I took this opportunity to watch some hollywood films that I long wanted to watch but had not gotten the time to. I watched Pulp Fiction (brilliant), Shawshank Redemption (phenomenal), and Tootsie (very good). There are many more films in my list that I want to watch and considering there are no good hindi films scheduled to release next month, I should be able to shorten my list a little more.

Watching Pulp, Shawshank, and Tootsie made me wonder once again why we cannot compare to hollywood in terms of the quality of our cinema? I always thought maybe it’s cos we don’t have as much money as they do. Making a film like Gladiator or Braveheart does cost a lot of money which we probably don’t have. But actually that’s not true. We do have enough money.

The budget of some of the films in the last few years confirms that. Saawariya last year was made for Rs 40 crore = $10 million (what a waste of money). OSO was made for Rs 45 crore I think. Devdas was made for about Rs 60 crore ( = $15 million). Now that’s a lot of money, and considering that things are a lot cheaper in India than in the States, I’d say that $10 million in India = $50 - 100 million in the States. Take star salaries for example. A top star today charges like Rs 10 crore = $2.5 million. A top star in hollywood, like Tom ‘Dickhead’ Cruise or Brad Pitt charge between $20 - 30 million, i.e. 8 to 10 times than the stars in India.

I’m not saying that you need a lot of money to make a good film. But there are subjects whose scale is so large (e.g. Gladiator or Braveheart) that you can’t make a film like that without spending a few bucks (I use these films as examples cos I simply love them).

What is even more disturbing is that we have such a rich history, richer than most countries in the world, and so many good stories to tell. Besides our independence struggle, we have failed miserably at bringing these stories to the world. I can think of very few films about our ancient/medieval history. The few that come to mind are:

• Mughal-E-Azam (a classic)
• Lagaan (not a historical fact, but set in 1897)
• Asoka (a piece of shit except for the climax)
• Taj Mahal (the film disappeared cos of bad publicity and not so attractive starcast)

So I had been long wanting for a modern day movie to match the class and scale of a Braveheart or Gladiator.

Then came Jodhaa Akbar and I feel like my prayers have been answered. JA is easily the most wisely spent 40 crores in a hindi film. Every second of this 3.5 hours magnum opus made me proud to be an Indian, made me proud of our history, our cinema, our actors, and Amisha Patel (I’ve always been proud to be an Indian for the last reason, just reiterating). The film is a masterpiece by all means - story, acting, music, cinematography, direction, dialogs, you name it.

I’d like to give special mention to the film’s dialogs. Being an ardent Urdu fan, the beautiful urdu spoken in the film is poetry to the ears.

Hrithik and Aishwarya look so pretty together that I am convinced they are a much better couple than the ‘Doughebag’ Bachchan and Aish (though I am still convinced she and I make the best couple).

We in bollywood are a very trendy industry: with that I don’t mean that we are very modern. What I mean to say is that if a particular kinda film works and there is scope to do more in that genre, we make 100s of such films.

Example:

• Sleaze film fest post Khwahish
• Remake spree post Don
• Sequels and more sequels post Phir Hera Pheri & Krrish
• Slapstick comedies post Hera Pheri
• Shitty films with Sunny Deol howling and beating hordes of baddies post Ghatak (though Ghatak itself was a great movie)

Now I just hope that after the success of JA, other sheep in the industry are going to make historicals, or to be more precise, historical love stories (notice how, with the exception of Lagaan, all indian historicals mentioned in this entry are love stories). I can think of a couple of anecdotes in history and I’d list them here, so that I can save some of our directories some time searching Wikipedia:

• Prithviraj Chauhan and Sanyogta
• Chandragupta Vikramaditya and Dhruvaswamini

But I fear one thing. JA did a wonderful job at mixing fact with fiction. Any historical dealing with pre-modern times inevitably has to go that route cos we don’t have a good documentation of the time. Braveheart, Gladiator, and Mughal-E-Azam all have a mix of fact and fiction in them. A film succeeds if the balance is right, which JA has. I fear that in the quest of making historicals, some of our industry men are going to fabricate total fairy tales around historical characters.

I won’t be surprised to see love stories of Shivaji and his wife (I don’t think he had one but won’t be surprised), Asoka and some girl (oops, didn’t we make that one already?), Maharana Pratap and one of his 20,000 wives, yada yada yada…

The point about fiction brings me to this next point. Dear Rajputs, f*** you. You morons have nothing better left to do but to ban Jodhaa Akbar in Rajasthan just cos according to you douchebags Jodhaa wasn’t Akbar’s wife and such portrayal has hurt your wonderful legacy. Let me tell you dickheads these coupla things:

• Does it really friggin matter what one says about your 400 year old ancestors? You morons don’t seem to care when international tourists are raped in Rajasthan. That apparently does not hurt the prestige of the state. But when some wonderful director makes a film which might have some facts about your 400 year old ancestors wrong (which might actually be true for all we know cos there is no way to verify), that affects your prestige.. well done monkey brains.
• What legacy are you talking about? I don’t mean to be mean or regionalistic here, but you Rajputs are forgetting that you guys remained NEUTRAL in the 1857 struggle for freedom. That’s some tainted legacy, aye?

I hope no one ever releases a film in your region again…!!

All this nonsense about hurt sentiments pisses me off (I’ll leave the details for another post).

Lastly, I have a dream.. a dream that Jodhaa Akbar did not fulfill - a historical not centering on a love story. I know love is an essential element and even Braveheart and Gladiator had a love angle, but it wasn’t the central theme of the film. I hope we get there someday too.. there are a lot of wonderful stories our history has in store for us…!!

But anyway.. Ashutosh Gowarikar.. take a bow dude..!!

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