It’s the chemistry, not the history, stupid! Jodhaa Akbar is not a historical film, it’s a romantic period film, making the valuable point that often people from different backgrounds and cultures do fall in love. Yet, for a Rs 40 crore film, it is poorly shot and executed (to have wipes between scenes is an incredibly lazy transition device), Aishwarya’s costumes abound in badly cut brassieres, some of the forts look like they are (and probably were) made of cardboard, the music is eminently forgettable, of which the most pathetic sequence is the Republic Day parade-type of song, in which only the tanks and the overhead fly-past are missing.Yet the film works only because of Hrithik and the sheer passion he manages to ignite on the screen. What is it that makes him so different? After all, he is mostly playing Rambo-Akbar, and there is an ample display of his rippling muscles as he strips his shirt (eat your heart out Shah Rukh, this is the real six abs version) and is effortless in his sword play. He has been hampered by a melodramatic script (very Mughal-e-Aazam with Prithvi Raj Kapoor-style declamation) and various anglicised versions of Urdu spoken by those around him. He has the impossible task of acting opposite Aishwarya Rai, whom no one could ever accuse of acting — and yet the man manages to transcend every problem. The film should have been called Akbar’s Jodhaa. (Funnily enough, Salman Rushdie has apparently written about how Akbar invented this gorgeous impossible ideal woman called Jodhaa, and the same thought crossed my mind while watching the film). Despite all ham-handed attempts by Gowariker, Hrithik as Akbar creates this Jodhaa in front of our eyes. We love her, bra and all, because he loves her. Like her, we try to resist him initially only because this is a wonderful metrosexual, renaissance man, and his very touch could make us swoon and forget reality. Hrithik actually manages to step out of playing Rambo-Akbar and become the smouldering Sufi, a Rumi-Akbar, with ease. And as he makes the transition, he makes us believe that Aishwarya is the ultimate dream, the woman through whom he can create his beloved Din-e-Ilahi, the religion that combines the best of Islam and Hinduism. When he looks at Aishwarya, we see her through his eyes, she ceases to be a plastic beauty. As his eyes crinkle with desire, we begin to desire her too. This is the secret of screen chemistry. We have seen it happen before with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, with Raj Kapoor and Nargis — and now with Hrithik and Aishwarya. The strange thing, of course, is that in the other cases, the couples were actually deep in the midst of an affair and so the transition of that passion onto screen was not difficult. But in Jodhaa Akbar Hrithik manages to create magic with Ash on screen without any off-screen passion between them.He does it through his sheer emotive calibre as he plays the perfect man, good-looking, sensitive, caring and the perfect king. And, a Muslim. Are we ready for that? So Hrithik becomes not the stereotypical hard-core terrorist that the community has been lately identified with, but rather the embodiment of love, and, despite scenes of war and cruel justice, we believe him. We fall in love with him, and because we love him, we fall in love with the object of his desire — Aishwarya. What is also impressive about Hrithik is that he is unlike other actors who are now rarely out of their real-life persona — Govinda plays Govinda, Shah Rukh plays Shah Rukh, Salman plays Salman. Hrithik, on the other hand, ceases to be Hrithik and seems to melt, metamorphose into Akbar as he cajoles, caresses and captivates his reluctant queen. He puts his entire self into playing the lover-king, even in the over-theatrical scene when he goes into a Sufi trance. His soft smile and beatific look transcend the ridiculous device of a ray of light zipping past. We know that this man can be resolute as well as gentle, thoughtful as well as warrior-like. And so the capricious beauty he encounters has to be tamed to his ways, much like the wild elephants he encounters. But instead of a Taming of the Shrew situation, this process has to appeal to modern sensibilities, and so he gives her respect and equal status in return for her love. She, in turn, before acquiescing to love him, struggles to establish the ground rules of this equality. Of course, the latter is part of the script and of the ideal make-believe world created by Gowariker in which Hindus and Muslims live in gender-sensitive, happy harmony. But it is a good measure of Hrithik’s acting that he manages to convey to Aishwarya that he (while enacting Akbar) loves her and she too, like us, responds to him, coming alive, out of her normal ice-maiden stupor. If a liberal-minded, truthful and intelligent man looked at us with that deep love and slight smile, would it be possible to resist?The film grabs us because it ultimately touches us at a very visceral point: we look at the woman through the man’s eyes, and as he desires her, we fall in love too. In fact, the real chemistry here is between Hrithik and the audience, and as he makes love to Aishwarya, he actually is making love to us.Dare I even say it — it is how a minority ruler wins over a majority praja? The writer is author of ‘Darlingji: The True Love Story Of Nargis and Sunil Dutt’
