The first half of Ashutosh Gowarikar's 'Jodhaa Akbar' is such a delight that we told ourselves -If we have to sit the whole damn day to watch such brilliant stuff we will gladly do it - What is three hours and twenty minutes.

15 February 2008 (Sawf News) - The first half of Ashutosh Gowarikar's Jodhaa Akbar is such a delight that we told ourselves -If we have to sit the whole damn day to watch such brilliant stuff we will gladly do it - What is three hours and twenty minutes.

The film blends Gowarikar's spin on Mughal history with his take on love after marriage.

It starts from the time Akbar was crowned Mughal emperor by Bairam Khan in the midst of a war against Sikandar Shah at the tender age of 13.

It then fast forwards to the period where he matured as a ruler and began to assert himself over his advisers.

Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan in a still from 'Jodhaa Akbar'.

The main focus of the film is the political alliance that Akbar forged with Rajput ruler Raja Bharmal by marrying his daughter, often referred to as Jodhaa Bai. It also covers other important events of his formative years as a ruler such as the Second Battle of Panipat in which he defeated the Hindu king Samrat Hem Chander Vikramaditya and the repealing the jizya tax on non-Muslims.

Jodhaa Akbar is not a historical, even though Gowarikar has claimed it is part history. It is a period film with a historical backdrop.

There are a lot of things that are delightful about the film - the direction, cinematography, performances, sets, music but most of all it is Gowarikar's willingness to grapple with details.

The battle scenes were very well done, for example. The repealing of the jizya tax was also convincingly shown, albeit with a lot of artistic license.

The film consists of two distinct storylines.

Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan in a still from Jodhaa Akbar.

Akbar's formative years from 13 to 28 years, during which he matured from an overawed young boy to a brave warrior and a astute ruler who dabbled in the arts, science, architecture and engineering. This part of the story is based on well documented history

Akbar's use of marriage as a political alliance, which too is based on documented history, and how his arranged marriage blossomed into romance, which is entirely fictional.

The problem with Jodhaa Akbaris that it attempts to blend two stories, both of which warrant a full length feature film. Worst, one story is history the other fiction. But that is not all. Sequences in the film belong neither to history nor the fiction. Unfortunately they are long sequences where the director's penchant for details generates yawns not thrills.

The two song sequences come to mind. We are not complaining about the songs, they are brilliant, just their needless insertion into an already long film.

The sword fighting sequence between Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik was pointless and stretched credibility very thin.

The love scene between Akbar and Jodhaa, which leads to them finally consummating their marriage. It went on and on, going nowhere. After almost ten minutes Hrithik's lips came close to Aishwarya's but the audience knew there would be no kiss. If Hrithik had come any closer we are sure Amitabh's voiceover would have interrupted him telling him to behave with his bahu!

The fight between Akbar and Sharifuddin Hussain (Akbar's sister's husband) was pure Bollywood masala that could easily have been omitted without detracting from the film.

We are stumped! Why did Gowarikar have to include these sequences in the film?

We liked the performance by Aishwarya, loved the background musical score and the performances by Raza Murad (Shamsuddin Atka Khan - Baba Khan), Nikitin Dheer (Sharifuddin Hussain - sister's husband) and Sonu Sood (Rajkumar Sujanmal).

Ashutosh Gowariker's story telling was expectedly impressive.

The film of course belongs to Hrithik Roshan - he was brilliant!

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