Jodhaa Akbar

In a standout scene, Jodhaa Bai and Jalal-ud-din-Akbar are sitting across each other. She’s written something she wants her husband to read. After waffling for a couple of minutes, he returns the beautifully-inscribed parchment to her, confessing he can neither write nor read: he was raised to be a warrior, not a litterateur. She lowers her eyelashes and says: ek patni apne pati ka naam kaise le sakti hai. He gazes at her, love-struck, as she blushes becomingly: the thing between them is electric.

It’s confirmed. Dhoom 2 was no fluke. Hrithik and Aishwarya are the hottest pair of lovers Bollywood has. You forget that these two are trying to be Shehenshah Akbar and his Mallika-e-Hindustan: this is a man and woman in the eternal act of finding love. And only in this moment, and others like this one, does Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Jodhaa Akbar spark to life, because this is territory the director can traverse sure-footedly. He takes us into their boudoir, where they lie next to each other, a gossamer net keeping them less than an inch apart: you can sense their yearning. A sword duel between them turns into a stylised mating dance, where breaths mingle yet lips don’t meet.

For the rest, where history comes crowding in, Gowarikar keeps his distance. The altercations between hungry-for-power siblings and an emperor struggling to rule a fractious bunch of satraps, the discussions between Akbar and his wise men, the taking stock of his praja by a wise and compassionate ruler, the epic scale computer-generated battle scenes — are all observed at arm’s length. Clearly, even if he has done the smart thing and called his movie more imagination than history, the director wants to make doubly sure that he won’t get more slammed than he already has, in the authenticity department.

But even if you discount all the arguments being trotted out by angry historians, and Rajputs — some claiming Jodha was theirs, some saying that she didn’t exist — you can’t get over the fact that Jodhaa Akbar, at nearly three-and-a-half hours, is much too long. The editing is bland, and the pace so slack in so many places that you drift off. Till the next time Aish and Hrithik come near each other, resplendent in their industrial strength jewelry and glittering costumes.

Neither Hrithik nor Aishwarya, despite the best efforts of the stylists, look like they belonged back then: he is pure eye candy, stripped down to his bronzed skin; she sports a stunning makeup-less appearance, which doubtless takes longer than pancake to put in place. Except for Raza Murad, whose Urdu diction is pitch perfect, everyone else struggles: muaaff kar dijiye, they go, and it’s hard to keep from laughing. Of the ensemble, Ila Arun, with her raccoon eyes (she plays the evil dai-ma who tries to come between the lovers), and Sonu Sood (he is Jodhaa’s bhai-saa, who teaches her the fine art of duelling with swords), fill out their roles.

Watch Jodhaa Akbar for its beguiling moments of amour. The rest is window dressing.

shubhra.gupta@ expressindia.com