/> Starring Aishwarya Rai, Hrithik Roshan, Sonu Sood, Ila Arun, Niketan Dheer
Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker
Rating: *** ½

There's Akbar, in full regalia, watching a traditional sufi qawalli when he suddenly goes into a spritual trance and joins the qawwalls for a dance to divinity.

This historic moment that takes us beyond the distending dynasties of Mughal history, couldn't have been possible without Hrithik Roshan's amazing capacity to infiltrate the portals of divinity through dance movements.

Very often as we, wonder-eyed and open-mouthed, traverse the sanguinary and simply-stunning spectacle of Ashutosh Gowariker's historical epic, we end up looking at King Akbar as interpreted by Hrithik Roshan rather than as what the Mughal myth might have been.

The body language of the sinewy sword-wielding poet-warrior takes us back to Mel Gibson in Braveheart and Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai rather than Prithviraj Kapoor who played King Akbar in K Asif's undying classic Mughal-e-Azam with such imposing imperiousness.



Is Gowariker's Mughal-e-awesome fated to be as tall and magniloquent as Asif's deserved costume drama? In terms of the creative and visual terrain covered in the course of the 3 hour-20 minute journey from history to hysteria from mellow to melodrama, and back, Gowariker's vision subsumes a reined-in wealth of ideas and images suppressed into an opulent but aesthetic orgy of love, romance, war, hatred and secularism and sublimity.

The noble righteousness of the creative mind (so evident in Gowariker's earlier films Lagaan and Swades) here jumps out of the screen to seize the audience by the solar plexus and transport us into an era when brother battled brother in bitter rage.

But love,kambakht ishq, blossomed in the inner chambers of a secular Muslim emperor who married a fiercely individualistic Rajput queen and allowed space to be her own person.

Wisely the narrative patterns Akbar's chequered life love and wars through the various characters who influence his mind and heart. To begin with we see the young Akbar being moulded into a violent creature of revenge and acquisition by his senapati-mentor Bairam Khan (Uri).

But sorry, Akbar with his melting eyes and a heart to match, won't behead his enemies unless they push him beyond the brink.

In a frightening burst of vengeful brutality we see Akbar ordering his soldiers to thrown down a stubborn adversary's head-first to death. A smashing mise en scene, no doubt.

But all said and dumped, Ashutosh Gowariker's Akbar is a man who'd rather live in peace than wallow in war.

Alas, Akbar lived in violent battle-friendly times. His repudiation of a culture of confrontationism is benchmarked by the characters who shape his life ...There's the very complex relationship that Akbar shares with his foster-mother (Ila Arun, brilliantly choleric).

This troubled relationship and the friction between the foster-mother and Akbar's new bride could be straight out of Indra Kumar's Beta...More filmy stuff? You got it!

Doesn't the ambivalent equation between the foster- mother and Akbar's real mother (Poonam Sinha, eternally lost as though worried about what the cook must be preparing back home for the kids' dinner) remind you of Durga Khote and Sonia Sahni in Raj Kapoor's Bobby?

Ashutosh Gowariker purposely and sure-handedly brings in kitschy elements from great commercial cinema to provide a kind of warm and ready-to-wear accessibility to his historic tale.

The filming of the durbar-song Azeem-o-shaan shahenshah is the last word in spectacle.Breathtaking is the word that comes to mind often in this breathless but never breadth-less tale of vibrant valour and vitality.

Never before have we seen battle sequences so spectacular and energetic in Hindi cinema. Take the opening sequence where the battle lines close ranks in such passionate movements that we the audience feel trampled at the center.

Kiran Deohans' swift-but-sublime cinematography is of international caliber, on a par with anything that we've seen in Gladiator or Braveheart. A R Rahman's music is a bit of a letdown, though.

Veering between authenticity and listener-friendliness it's a bit of a mellow mish-mash signifying none of those enchanting echoes of Jodha and Akbar's royal hearts resonating with ever-lasting romanticism.

The love story occupies the pride of place in Jodhaa-Akbar.

The sudden marital alliance between the benign king and the free-spririted Rajput queen, their post-marriage courtship, the monstrous misunderstanding that cuts through their growing fondness, and the final and irreversible reconciliation, are portrayed with exquisite and penetrating fluidity.

Not once does the director allow the inherent opulence of his theme to overpower the love that grows like a tender blossom in a parched desert.

Hrithik Roshan's pleading poetic eyes in a warrior's face define the historic romance as much as Aishwarya Rai's swan-like grace and passionate individualism. After Dhoom 2 this pair whips up a Mughalai feast of passion and romance without skipping a single beat.

There're thundering interludes of romance between the central characters all done in a captivating blend of poetry and drama echoing the past in a sprinkle of ever-renewable emotions. But none of this is ever done in a self- congratulatory over-flamboyant style.

Jodhaa-Akbar takes us back to a time when love meant never having to say your are Salim.

Watch this Mughal-e-awesome as a splendidly spiced-up slice of history. Or just savour the chemistry between the warrior and the princess, with hundreds of junior artistes, elephants, rabbits and parrots accompanying the couple's journey from secularism to eternity.