Fools rush in...

Imagine a totally tone deaf person, me for instance, attempting to belt out a classic immortalised by Whitney Houston or Celine Dion. Just how bad am I? Hell, dogs usually howl when I sing!! Now, for lack of a better example, thats exactly how you would cringe if you watch Rajneeti after having read the Mahabharata or even watched the Sunday morning version of it on TV.

By itself, Rajneeti is not as bad as some offers that get spewed out of Bollywood (read RGV's Aag, Tashan, Drona, Blue, Himmesss bhai's movies ...... you get the picture!). Other than a loose storyline that takes forever to build up, a pace that slacks once in a while and some wooden performances, it actually is far more bearable than the Tashans and the Dronas I have endured & the Aags I have never dared experience. I seem to find many who have been bowled over by its star cast, its grand scale and by the HQ (Hotness Quotient) of its key actors. Why do they come out raving about the movie? I am not sure but lets look at it this way - if there can exist people who enjoy watching a classic mutilated and turned it into a remix with scantily clad, gyrating nymphets, who are willing to pay to watch Himmesss bhai in action, or women who want to lip lock with Emraan Hashmi, anything is possible!! After all, this is the Age of Kali (Kaliyug) isn't it!!! Anyways to be fair, it is difficult for the brain to function when you are gaping open mouthed at Arjun Rampal or Ranbir Kapoor!! 

Nevertheless, take away all that fru fru & blind yourself to the temptation of the HQ, and all you are left with is a shoddy, juvenile, half baked attempt at aping an immortal epic that has endured for centuries. And what is key to the movie's downfall is the fact that the director tries to be clever and instead of sticking to his stronghold - politics in BIMARU land, decides to venture on his own version of the flight of Icarus - by making an ambitious attempt at weaving in strains of 2 epics - the Mahabharata and the Godfather, into his movie. And in attempting to do so, Mr Jha falls flat on his face making the movie neither a horrifying expose of Indian politics (on a tangent, the title of Expose King thus remains firmly placed on Madhur Bhandarkar's head) nor a complex tale of ambitions like the Mahabharata - infact in his lingo, this would literally be a "dhobi ka kutta, na ghar ka, na ghat ka"!!

His canvas lacks the vision and expansiveness of Peter Jackson's LOTR; he is sadly wanting in his grasp of finer nuances & subtexts that Vishal Bharadwaj brings to his brilliant adaptations of the Bard and he lacks the focus & incisiveness that Shyam Benegal brought to his classic adaptation of the Mahabharat, Kalyug. He is totally out of his depth and completely misses out on the complexities of the epic, the sub texts within sub texts, his characters are weakly drawn and fail to elicit the sympathy, hatred or pity. For instance, his mish mash of Bhishma cum Krishna doesn't convey the former's anguish as a man burdened by the responsibilities that force him to do what he loathes nor does he convey Krishna's wisdom, his guile and puppeteering. He even manages to reduce the greatest tragic hero of our country, our own desi Heathcliff (No its not Devdas but Karna) into a bumbling, snorting bull in a political china shop! Infact the scene where his Kunti meets Karna, one of the most moving scenes in the epic, is greeted with loud guffawing in the theatre!!! Compare that to Shashi Kapoor's descent into his own personal hell after becoming aware of the tragedy of his birth or even that of Karna in the pop version of Mahabharata by Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni - Palace of Illusions, and you understand what I mean! 

But my biggest issue with Mr Jha is regarding the (non existent) character of Draupadi - was a wooden Katrina playing a wannabe Gandhi the best you could do to portray a woman whose anger and pride and desire for revenge caused the bloodbath that ended an entire race and era???? 

On the cast, the one bright spot is some superb acting by Manoj Bajpai whose Duryodhana was the only character I felt for in the whole movie!!! Ranbir Kapoor is cute and acts well, but Arjun he is not!!! Arjun Rampal tries really hard to be the hot headed, all brawn, no brains Bheem and one should give him an A just for effort and HQ! Katrina is as wooden as ever, no surprises there!!! Nana Patekar, smirking every 5 seconds doesn't make you a Machiavellian Krishna. Now before this post turns into a meandering, long winded replica of the movie it is supposed to review, I shall call it a day, rather a night, leaving behind my two bit advice for Mr Jha - "only fools rush in where angels fear to tread"; so in future, kindly refrain from such ambitious flights of fancy and leave the task of adaptations to the undisputed master - Vishal Bharadwaj!!!!