Dir. Akbar Khan, India, 2005, 168 mins
Cast: Kabir Bedi, Zulfikar Syed, Sonya Jehan
When I was a child I was told the story of the Taj Mahal in virtually one sentence: "It was built by an Indian Emperor as a memorial to his beloved wife after she died and it is now one of the seven wonders of the world". Akbar Khan's Bollywood style epic film takes some two and three quarter hours to cover that same ground.
Not that it's really about the building of that famous memorial, which is crammed into the last ten minutes or so. This is the story of the mythical love affair and marriage that inspired it, between Prince Khuram, later known as Emperor Shah Jehan and his beloved, Mumtaz Mahal. The film, based on historical fact, is set at the height of the Mughal Empire between 1592 and 1666 and it is not only phenomenally long but is almost two films in one. Indian audiences, it would appear, relish getting value for money. The first 40 minutes or so is an action movie without a song and dance number in sight, which tells the story of the battle between the elderly Shah Jehan's's sons for the throne and the triumph of Aurangzeb, Jehan's ruthless second son, who murders his brother and imprisons his father and sister. The story then moves into its main section, an extended flashback, as Jehan (Kabir Bedi) tells his daughter Jehan Ara the story of the great love affair between himself and her mother.
And here the film gets the full Bollywood treatment. The hero Khuram (Zulfikar Syed) is impeccably handsome and noble, Mumtaz (Sonya Jehan) virtuous and beautiful. Their romance is charted in a series of extravagant song and dance numbers, while the story telling is a mixture of fairy tale and melodrama. Khuram has a beautiful but wicked stepmother (Pooja Batra), who is determined that her daughter from her first marriage (Kim Sharma) will marry the prince and so become Empress in her turn and will stop at nothing to make this happen. However after overcoming many obstacles, including Mumtaz's noble renunciation of her love for the good of the Empire, the lovers are finally reunited in a happy marriage, which ends with Mumtaz's deathbed request to her husband to mark her memory by building for her a beautiful tomb.
While the overblown Bollywood style can be a bit much for Western audiences, the film is certainly a visual treat, with lush and spectacular sets, colourful costumes and some well staged battle scenes. There's some good acting as well, particularly from Pooja Batra and Kabir Bedi. The historical background is interesting, for example the fact that Prince Khuram's father the Emperor Jahangir wants him to marry an Iranian princess to secure a political alliance with that country. And there was for me another bit of useful education in the film. We in the West associate the Bollywood tradition mainly with Hindu culture. The story of the Mughal Emperors and the Taj Mahal itself are however part of Muslim history. Jahangir and Shah Jehan ruled in the name of Allah but with a considerable degree of religious tolerance. A relevant nugget of knowledge there for this time, when it is in all our interests to develop an understanding of Islamic history and culture.
Carol Allen
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