Eklavya : A Royal Farce

A starcast that can be envied by any other film maker.....
Performance exactly showing us the view of the film maker.....
Wonderful settings in a Royal fort....
A plot that has a potential of being a mind tickling thriller.....

What More could you ask for?

I know what more to ask for.... I ask for a good story telling skills, a good direction, a good screenplay and a script that could reveal itself in bits and pieces.... I did not get it.

Eklavya (which was earlier titled Yagna) is a story of a royal guard of a fort, for whom the dharm is to safeguard the people living in the fort, above all his Rana - the King. Though the Kingdom of the kings have been lost and the royal family lives in the modern day India in the same old royal fashion. Let me tell you the story briefly in a different way....

In the land of Modern India, there was a King and a Queen, who happily lived with their 2 children, a prince and princess who are twins. The Prince is very intelligent and smart, the princess is mentally challanged, but the love between the two is definitely there. The Prince grows up and goes to a foreign land for studies. There is a Father-son duo of King's brother and nephew who wants the wealth of the king. There is a Deputy supritendent of Police, who wants the royal family to get in trouble for all the atrocities that they have done towards the subject in the name of Untouchability. And there is a Royal Guard, who is the only one out there to save lives.

The queen dies, no one knows why? The King wants to kill the royal guard. The Prince wants to save the royal guard. The brother of king and his son betrays the king later and the prince helps them. The Royal guard wants to protect the life of the prince even after knowing that he has betrayed the king.

Motives for each of the character in this case is unkown and you want to know more why a character is behaving in the way that he is... and the plot slowly unfolds itself, giving you the reason of Queen's death, then the reason of Prince betrayal of the king, then for the betrayal of King's brother, then for the Royal guard's secret and finally everything fits into its place.

This could easily have been the most intriguing and thrilling plot of our times, but just think if you knew the motive of each character at the time of sequences as they happen on the movie screen infront of you.... It kills the complete thrill and unexpected turns of the story telling.

This is exactly the issue with the movie. Without developing the characters, the story gives us the motives that each one has, and the characters' responses to the situation absolutely predictably runs in your mind before it comes on the screen.

Amitabh Bachhan (as Eklavya) acts very well, without letting the Bachhan persona getting mixed up with the character.... But... I wish director could have done it. The revelation that the royal guard is the center of the story and the royal games are played because of some secret of his, if it would have come at the end would have made the movie interesting. But that would reduce AB's role drastically which i am sure the director might not like. So what do you do... you tell the secret first and then describe the royal games. A good performance gone waste.

Jackie Shroff as (JyotiWardhan, King's brother) Looks sinster but does not find the chemistry with Jimmy shergill which was very important for him in the movie. Jackie shroff has acted fairly well, and being VC's favourite gets one of the most important roles.

Do you remember Ajit Wachhani's role in Hum Aapke hai Kaun ? .... I know i have caught you thinking .... that is exactly what will happen when after 2 years some one would ask you about Raima sen's (as Nandini, the princess) , Jimmy Shergil's (Udaywardhan), Parikshit Sahani's, Sharmila Tagore's (the queen) role after 2 years. The short duration of the movie, does not allow you to understand the minds, motives and personalities of any of these characters.

The rest, Sanjay Dutt (as DSP Chauhar), Saif Ali Khan ( as the Prince) and Vidya Balan (As Rajjo, Prince's Love Interest) have performed very well. Sanjay Dutt and Vidya Balan shines in absolutely unimportant roles.

So, if we forget all these short comings of the movie, there were a few good things in the movie.

• Firstly, the cinematography by Nataraj Subramanian was definetely note worthy
• Abhijat Joshi, the writer of the movie should be applauded for the concept of the movie (earlier too he had written movies like Mission Kashmir, Kareeb, and above all Lage raho munnabhai (along with Rajkumar Hiranandani)
• Performance by Boman Irani as a "Not so Manly" King is amazing. He captures the nuances of the character very well.



• Saif Ali Khan and AB did the best they could possibly do for the movie.

The music of the movie by Shantanu Moitra was just average. "Chanda re... Chanda re..." is a nice composition, but picturising it in the bright daylight with some kite flying did not seem to be the best idea.

The Costumes by the real Kings of today (Raghavendra Rathore) are good. Creative producers Rajkumar Hirani and Vir Chopra does their work well. Action sequences by Tinnu Verma are strictly OK.

Sets By Nitin Desai are the best part of the movie. Though there is no favourite scene for me in this movie, but the cottage of Eklavya designed by Nitin Desai and team to me was the best thing in the movie, a nice place for a modest person to live with lots of candles in the house.

But the movie, which is essentially story telling is not made of characters but of an overall impact of all the pieces of Jigsaw.

First time i felt that the movie was shorter than what was required. The movie is 1 hr. 50 Min in length. I would have loved a little elaborate effort of building up of suspense at every step.

Direction of Vidhu Vinod Chopra after a break of 7 years (last being Mission Kashmir) disappoints. Though the effort for collaging on such a huge canvas of 2 hrs is not an easy task.

(Trivia : Vidhu Vinod Chopra's short documentary "An encounter with Faces" (1978) was nominated for Oscars)

I have a strong feeling that the movie is going to work well overseas for the overall royal treatment of it. EROS International, the worldwide distributor of the film are going to profit at the end of it.

So A good concept gone waste deserves not more than 2* for the some of the pieces of jigshaw.