Panipat
The people of my generation, must be remembering the days when we had newscasters like Salma Sultana and her ilk reading out the news like one would a checklist.
I would often watch that news and a silent tick mark would appear in my head at the end of each of their sonorous comments.
I had that same funny sensation whilst watching Panipat.
The movie was just a spate of incidents strung together, and me having read the history of this particular battle avidly, kept feeling that the myriad collection of individuals who had scripted this movie were just ticking one check box after another.
It is just a bland recitation of fact after fact, and somehow the grandeur that one associates with historicals was absent. In fact Lagaan had better sets than did Panipat.
Gowariker must have known that comparisons to Bajirao were inevitable and given that this battle occurs just two decades after Bajirao's demise, this movie could be considered a sequel to that one, he should have been more particular about getting the details bang on.
I swear to you that even the cricket ground in Lagaan was grander and better thought out than the entire battle scene in this one.
One couldn't help but notice how fake even the patches of blood looked. I have seen better color patches in holi sequences or in the artwork of kindergartners.
And this in a world where the inhabitants have seen Bahubali, Bajirao and Kesari on the large screen and The King ( Algincort) and the Battle of the Bastards on the smaller one.
For shame Gowariker! How do you take such a great warrior and reduce his mighty victories into this utterly mediocre distillation.
The valour and talent of this Super Soldier deserves better treatment than that meted out by Gowariker.
There is zero chemistry between the lead couple.
And though he tried, Sanjay Dutt could channel neither Kancha Cheena from Agneepath nor Alauddin Khalji from Padmavat.
He inspired zero feelings in me with his caricature of an Afghani monster.
The actors are good, but it's the script that lets them down.
Enough of this miserable dishrag cinema!
Reading about this battle and then seeing it on screen made me wonder what India would have been, had Bhau remained undefeated. Fact remains that after this battle Abdali didn't return to India. Another sad fact is that no matter how superior your talent, you have to be a good politico to showcase it. Or else, you get backstabbed just like Sadashiv Bhau did.
All this total-waste-of-my-money movie did was to echo the current political scenario.
When you wanna show politics, show it like they did in The Favourite. Don't be half-assed about it.
For those of you who still have a hankering to see it and can't wait go to the theatres, go! But those of you who can wait, it's streaming on NetFlix soon.
How do I know this? Coz it said so in the opening credits...if only I had known this before I bought tickets.
And wait the story of my misery doesn't end here, it ends with the fact that I took an hour plus to get home because there were VVIPs in town. And as always, VIP movement becomes Restriction of movement for the tax payers.
PayTm me 5% of the money I saved you.😉😉😉
And I hope that you were ensconced at home watching Kohli's heroics.
Cheers till the next one.
Love and Peace.
P.S. I am both dreading and looking forward to watching Tanhaji.
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