Ranveer's portrayal hardly reflects an astute administrator who is fabled to have nearly half a million horsemen.
When he attacked Chittor, he was a well-entrenched Sultan. His legacy, like that of most powerful medieval rulers, may be troubled but not unidimensional. Alauddin Khalji was a man who left a lasting mark on the way a large part of India was administered for a very long time. Ranveer Singh, who is not very bright on his best day, seems almost pushed into playing one of the most astute Delhi sultans. Eventually, we have a princess who seems straight out of James Cameron's Avatar, who is then asked to model for grand sarees and Tanishq. Seemed he wanted strong woman characters, one particularly strong, and then ran out of ideas. Poor Deepika Padukone – she actually tried to hold fort but General Bhansali seemed to know not what to tell her. Yes, creative liberty can be taken, but to what end? It is welcome if it adds to the original, not if it dumbs down and saps out the original's spirit. Add an IMAX cenotaph to it and it becomes a global first for an Indian film.Īs someone conversant with the original text told me after a viewing, “ Padmaavat is not Padmavat”. Veering as much away from the text as Sinhala is from Mewar, Viacom 18 Motion Pictures and Bhansali Productions present a slo-mo choreography of cardboard characters to bury history in 3D. Also, the expectation was that someone as famous as Bhansali, would deal with history carefully.Īfter years of presumably painstaking hardwork, a humongous budget – some say Rs 200 crore – and months of mindless controversy over Rajput pride and decency, Bhansali produced a bore. When Sanjay Leela Bhansali, two decades into filmmaking, said that he was picking up Padmaavat as his next project, one hoped that a milestone of Indian literature would reach a wider section of the population. Another half a century, and movies started to be made on the subject, sticking to the simplified storyline. The new, dominant intelligentsia failed to grasp the importance of this sixteenth-century Sufi literature. In the process, somewhere, Jayasi’s nuanced and beautiful epic dropped out of the discourse. Naturally, the new retellings of Rani Padmini of Chittor found a following. These were times when Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's brand of 'nationalistic' literature dominated the culturescape, where monks would band together to take on invaders.
Half a century down the line Bengali versions of Tod's tale started coming, romanticising a Hindu queen who gave up her life, but not her honour to a Muslim invader. Presumably, he depended more on the local bardic telling of the story.īe that as it may, the narrative caught on. Significantly, Tod doesn't mention Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s monumental work Padmavat as an inspiration. His two influential volumes played an important part in shaping opinion, despite being criticised for inaccuracies.Īmong the many tales he presented was also the legend of Rani Padmini of Chittor and how she committed jauhar – self immolation – when the fort of Chittor was about to fall to Alauddin Khalji. When James Tod wrote his Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan or the Central and Western Rajpoot States of India (1829-1932), the British East India Co was ruling the roost over a vast but fragmented sub-continent. Before watching this work of historical fiction, starring Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Shahid Kapoor, some background may come handy to know where Bhansali ended up.
CHARACTERS PLAYED BY OM PURI IN BHARAT EK KHOJ MOVIE
Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat, or Padmavati as the movie used to be called, has been subject to much controversy over the past couple of months, with the Karni Sena demanding a nationwide ban on the film.
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