An epic and magnificent spectacle, this film tells the story of Asoka, emperor of the Maurayan dynasty who, after witnessing the mass deaths caused by his own war against the neighbouring kingdom of Kalinga, embraced Buddhism and was responsible for introducing it as a world religion.
In a year when most American blockbusters were so bereft of entertainment that everyone - not least the multiplex - was forced to seek alternative sources of spectacle... more >
In a year when most American blockbusters were so bereft of entertainment that everyone - not least the multiplex - was forced to seek alternative sources of spectacle, its been heartening to report the arrival of subtitled epics - such as Amelie, Crouching Tiger and, increasingly, the Indian movies such as Asoka - creeping into the UKs Top Ten films, offering the chart a diversity lacking from, say, the UK pop charts.
The point about the Indian movies, in particular, is that these films have the ambition to try and pack everything - action, romance, comedy, musical numbers, even an intermission - into their three hours. Asoka can even get away with things Hollywood epics like The Patriot cant, by sticking a title card at the front of the film suggesting that the characters spiritual journeys are more important than strict historical accuracy in myths such as these. The plots pantomimic: exiled lord (Indias biggest star Shah Rukh Khan), pretending to be common man, woos noble princess (Kareena Kapoor) in the midst of thrilling swordplay and knockabout comedy before renouncing egotistical ambition for selfless love.
Watching the film is to experience once more a prelapsarian cinematic innocence, the sense of which we in the West may have forgotten about in the rush to pad out our features cardboard plots with special effects and Happy Meal tie-ins. Not that this camera doesnt eroticise all that it sees: the song and dance numbers offer pre-Hays Code sensuality on a modern budget; they look like Busby Berkeley routines shot by people with Ricky Martin and Destinys Child videos on their CV. The films credibility somehow survives intact despite the fact both leads spend far too much time wearing clingy clothes drenched in water, and that Kapoor takes almost three-quarters of the film to convince you shes more mythical warrior princess than pouty eighteen year old Page Three model. (Khan, too, is more fun to watch when his hair isnt down in full-on Conan The Barbarian mode.)
After his intimate portrait of brutality in The Terrorist, director Santosh Sivan here gets to try out something more expansive, but he keeps his eye on the natural world: he shoots water as he shoots fire as he shoots blood dripping from a leaf - everything lingers. In the final, bloody battle scenes, Sivan gets the audience in remarkably close to the action, showing us everything he can - its the court magicians equivalent of an open-hand trick - yet leaving us, suitably, as dizzy and disorientated as any of the characters caught up in the middle of war in the desert. Here, the director takes the most problematic element of that earlier film - the immediate juxtaposition of young kids and violence - and makes it work in favour of one of the films spiritual arguments: that we should find all the reason we need to stop killing in the faces of our children.
