Yet Jodhaa Akbar has loopholes that weaken its strength as a credible historical film. Hrithik and Ash may have brilliant chemistry but their performances are not as impressive as their body language. Hrithik does not make a convincing Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar, Aishwarya as Jodhaa is relatively better.

A historical Mills and Boon?

The film begins with Amitabh Bachchan's lengthy narrative that takes one through Emperor Humayun's death and Jalaluddin Mohammad's inheritance of throne. He is trained to be a fierce and ruthless conqueror who manages to add as many provinces to his empire as he touches. The Battle of Panipat is touched upon and the story of a thirteen year old warrior thus begins.

Interestingly, the story then steers towards his relationship with Jodhaa and more than half of the film is channeled towards Akbar and Jodhaa consummating their marriage. Ashutosh Gowarikar has repeatedly clarified that Jodhaa Akbar is more a figment of his creative imagination but one has to say that he pushes the creative boundaries (no matter how flexible they are) beyond belief in some instances. Here is an emperor who belongs to a dynasty of exceptionally virile and sexual men. They had numerous wives and even more mistresses. To even imagine that an emperor as masculine and powerful as Akbar would allow his wife these wiles is ridiculous.

Nevertheless, the romances are quite delicious in a very old fashioned Mills and Boon or Barbara Cartland kind of way. Here you have two exceptionally good looking, green eyed protagonists in a tug of war of emotions. Akbar sees Jodhaa for the first time (ever) when his daily morning court is distracted by the melodious sounds of her bhajans. He follows its trail and walks up to her, intrigued. It's riveting.

The sword fights may seem amateurish but when Akbar fights his lovely wife one night after she has (yet again) drawn the curtain between them, the sword fight becomes poetic. Off comes her turban and down cascades her hair. The scene is a cliché, but it is a beautifully shot one.

The inevitable religious
superiority kicks in

As director and screen play Ashutosh Gowarikar has made this film with a very Hindu viewpoint, all of us here in Pakistan, have undoubtedly eyed it with an equally Muslim bias. It happens with every Indian film that plays with the Hindu-Muslim issue in one way or another. On the surface, Jodhaa Akbar is the extremely neutral and pleasing tale of secularism, celebrating the love between a Muslim emperor and a Hindu princess. But scratch the surface and it's quite difficult to digest the fact that Akbar the Great's biggest quality - religious forbearance - is attributed to the fact that he is secular because he wants to please his Hindu wife. The storyline dictates that Akbar had taxes on the Hindus waived off (a fact that historians confirm) as his wife had made it clear she would not allow him to consummate the marriage until he 'won his heart and not just declared victory over her body by marrying her'.

In the film it is Jodhaa who convinces him to become more of a peoples' king and it is the mere hint of a perfectly sculpted eye brow raised in disapproval that makes him less hard hearted and more humane.

It is Akbar who agrees to construct a mandir within the Mughal Muslim fort, he who willingly samples vegetarian food from his wife's kitchen and he who endorses the importance of 'ek chutki sundoor' when he colours her maang. Jodhaa, for all her values and ethereal beauty, does not change anything about herself, indicating her moral superiority being a Hindu. It would have been more understandable if the Muslims of India had been protesting about that!