Bajirao Mastani ****
Dir: Sanjay Leela
Bhansali. With: Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Mahesh
Manjrekar. 158 mins. Cert: 12A
Since the millennium,
the writer-director-composer Sanjay Leela Bhansali has fashioned a series of
ornate wonders from mythological and historical material. He broke through with
2002’s Shah Rukh Khan-starring Devdas,
then delivered 2005’s affecting Black
– an expressionist The Miracle Worker
– before going for broke on 2013’s Ram-Leela,
casting Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh as the eponymous star-crossed
lovers. With Bajirao Mastani,
another epic tableau scattered with jewels and rose petals, Bhansali retains
his Ram-Leela leads and channels David Lean – albeit a Lean
with something far spicier than starch in his underwear. The result may be the
cinema’s most seductive monument to marital infidelity.
Singh’s Bajirao –
warmonger-in-chief of the 18th century Marathan regime – is
introduced playing away: leaving decorous wife Kashi (Priyanka Chopra) at home,
he’s sent to liberate the besieged Bundelkhand region, where he falls into
stride with local warrior princess Mastani (Padukone). Victory assured, they
repair to hers to compare scars – “Your wound is deep, let me see it,” Bajirao
insists, a line more Geordie Shore
than Mughal Empire – but it appears a one-time thing; once the blood cools, our
hero returns to family life. For Mastani, however, this battle isn’t over:
soon, she’s riding into court, demanding further satisfaction from the man she
loves. Uh-oh.
Bhansali’s
dramatising an ugly business, yet long stretches confirm this director is
incapable of framing anything other than an entirely captivating shot: this is
a film that plays out to the forgiving flicker of candlelight, and knows full
well the pleasures of letting the eye roam. After Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, it’s this year’s second Hindi film to
construct a glittering Palace of Mirrors, although Bhansali can’t resist adding
extra layers of polish: surfaces so reflective they beam a prototypical cinema
into adjacent suites, a lilting song, “Deewani Mastani”, in which Padukone
makes pop culture’s greatest use of a mandolin since R.E.M.’s “Losing My
Religion” and Bhansali paints the screen Indian Ivy.
The director handles
his performers with similar sensitivity and intelligence, and all three offer
real star turns, thereby avoiding fading into some singularly lavish scenery.
Padukone’s Mastani, a Mughal Alex Forrest, displays a steely determination in
the face of her hosts’ contempt that proves oddly ennobling. Chopra never
allows Kashi to become an afterthought: those eyes register a wife’s hurt every
bit as vividly as they have happiness elsewhere. And Singh’s bullet-headed
Bajirao, forever charging into uncharted physical and emotional terrain, marks
another fine showing from one of Bollywood’s most versatile leads: we spot
exactly why this bad boy commands the loyalty, even lust he does.
The second half rests
upon this sympathetic idea of the hero as akin to a buff, dreamy Henry VIII –
not some love rat, but a man of appetite, spoiled for choice. Here, Bhansali
details Bajirao’s attempts to reconfigure his household to better reflect the
contours of his heart, chiefly by insisting these women – one Hindu, one Muslim
– be treated as equals. It’s typical of the dignity Bhansali lends to this
triangle’s points that the women aren’t set to catfighting, rather dancing
together; no matter whether this is historically accurate, as filmed it
provides a model of flexible sisterhood, not to mention as harmonious a
setpiece as anything Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe shared in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. (Evidently
Bajirao begged to differ.)
There’s perhaps no
dressing up the downer ending – which at least reflects the era’s limited
tolerance for forward thinking – and the once-torrid energy relents a little as
the leads suffer in solitude. Yet overall, Bajirao
Mastani sounds many more progressive notes than most recent Western costume
dramas: it’s the work of a filmmaker recruiting in-every-sense hot leads to
cast off their traditional garb and attempt something that feels very modern.
In so doing, Bhansali has thrown down a sapphire-studded gauntlet to
established chart-topper Shah Rukh Khan’s rival Christmas release Dilwale; that it lands so delicately,
and yet so potently, is the surest sign we’re in the hands of an artist.
Bajirao Mastani is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
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