 |
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wife or daughter-in-law: Epic romance and
identity crisis |
|
| By Behindwoods
News Bureau. |
|
|
February 13, 2008 |
|
| Visitor
Medical Insurance |
|
|
This Friday the wheel of time will
be turned as we revisit, through Ashuthosh
Gowariker’s Jodha Akbar, one
of the most eventful and fascinating
pre-independence eras of our country:
the splendor of Rajasthan and the
opulence and grandeur of the Mughals.
The film will also celebrate a very
unique marriage that was at first
just a political truce |
|
|
and later,
an epic romance. With this epic film, Ashuthosh
Gowariker gets ready to unveil his yet most
ambitious project to date. It is not often
that filmmakers find history to be a very
favorable premise to construct a story that
is commercially viable, especially characters
that are very well known, popular, respected
and even revered. Any interpretation, however
sincere or genuine, will be questioned at
some stage. So, first let us applaud the tenacious
Mr. Gowariker and UTV for going ahead with
a subject that was not without its risks.
Let’s also save some applause for Friday,
because going by the director’s track
record and the amount of time and work that
have gone into this project, it will be worth
it.
The makers have said that Jodha Akbar is an
epic romance, the tale of a young Mughal king’s
unexpected journey towards the discovery of
true love. If the movie is indeed a love story
then it surely takes the credit for having
the largest ever canvas on which a romance
has been painted. And along with this, the
rise of a young Akbar becoming the greatest
Mughal emperor to have ruled our land has
also been charted. All of us know a thing
or two about Akbar, such as his great conquests
that earned him the title Shahenshah (king
of kings), his multifaceted persona, taste
for art and Din-e-Ilahi, and his idea of secularism
that still finds admirers. He remains one
of the few, maybe the only Mughal king to
be remembered both as a fierce conqueror and
a just emperor.
So what is Jodha Akbar going to tell us about
this great emperor and his life? Surely, everything
that happened in his life will be too much
even for Ashuthosh’s three hour plus
style of film making. So, we have until Friday
to go about guessing. History tells us that
Akbar, when a young conqueror, chose to befriend
rather than oppose the Rajputs, known for
their valiance. And it was out of this alliance
that the marriage of Jodha and Akbar materialized.
This is where some historians are up in arms
against the authenticity of the facts being
presented. History is less fact and more speculation,
and it is more the rule than the exception
that every story of the past has a conflicting
version. Here, we are told that Akbar and
Jodha never married; but in actual fact, Akbar
was Jodha’s father-in-law. History also
says that Akbar had three sons, though we
tend to forget two of them. The one we remember
is Jahangir or Salim (as he was named by his
parents). We are not too sure about what historians
have to say about this, but that great Hindi
classic, Mughal-e-Azam (which you have surely
heard of) revolves around the love story of
Salim and Anarkali, a court dancer. Of course,
it is widely believed that Anarkali is a case
of creative liberty skewering historical perspectives.
Who was Jodha? There are people who say that
she was the wife of Jehangir and there are
people who believe that she was the wife of
Akbar and there are also people who believe
that such a person never existed. The consensus
here seems to be something like this: Akbar
did not want to fight the reputed and valiant
Rajputs, seeing that a political truce -fortified
by matrimonial alliance- is the most peaceful
way to unify two empires, he proposed marriage
with a Rajput princess and won her hand. Jahangir
who also married a Rajput princess kept this
tradition alive. It was this princess who
gave birth to Shah Jahan. The only real issue
here is the name Jodha which some people think
is more likely to have been associated with
Jahangir than Akbar. But what’s in a
name? When one of the finest and most daring
directors in India comes up with a movie after
painstaking research, we have but one thing
to do: sit back and enjoy. There’s also
Rahman’s music and the star power of
Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya (for the first
time as Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) to look forward
to. And what better day for an epic romance
to open than Valentine’s weekend? The
one thing that is hard to guess here is just
how many of Akbar’s famous contemporaries
will Ashuthosh actually show on screen. Will
we have Birbal, Tansen and the other Navaratnas?
We’ll know all this and more on Feb.
15th. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
